Real estate question

[PeterB]

Anyone know if there's a site you can use to look up a given property, and find out any historical info about it, such as (for example) when it was built, by whom, who the owners were over the years, the floorplans, etc.? Just curious. I know there are sites out there to look up sale value, but I'm more interested in the historical aspects.

[BigGuynRusty]

None, as discussed before, City Planning office.
Unless of course someone built a site about the property you are interested in.

BGnR

[PeterB]

Ah, I see... too bad that kind of stuff isn't made publicly available on the web.

[ztirffritz]

Probably your local city/county website. My county website has this info and alot more. They have maps that can be overlapped to show flood zones, crime, car accidents, property values, etc.

[BigGuynRusty]

[quote PeterB]Ah, I see... too bad that kind of stuff isn't made publicly available on the web.
I totally agree, but do you want to pay to have that done? It would literally cost hundreds of millions of bucks in L.A. County alone to convert the paper documents to digital. I think they go back to the early 1800's. Just the manhours alone would be way more than I want to pay extra taxes for. First on my to do list for taxes is more cops.
The realtor boards are just now going digital forms, and have been scanning only the last five years of documents, and not a complete scan at that.

BGnR

[PeterB]

ztirffritz, interesting ... I just looked up a property, and the city's records included sales dating back to at least 1920. (Original sale price in 1920: $2500 !)

[ho'ard]

[quote PeterB]ztirffritz, interesting ... I just looked up a property, and the city's records included sales dating back to at least 1920. (Original sale price in 1920: $2500 !) Then your city already has spent quite a dime to input paper records.
Jealous . . .

[M A V I C]

[quote BigGuynRusty]do you want to pay to have that done? It would literally cost hundreds of millions of bucks in L.A. County alone to convert the paper documents to digital. I think they go back to the early 1800's. Just the manhours alone would be way more than I want to pay extra taxes for. First on my to do list for taxes is more cops.
In the area I live, my understanding is they did a cost-benefit analysis. They looked at how many man hours it would take to continue doing everything the old way vs. moving to a new system which would be digital and allow for online searching. They realized the new system would quickly pay for itself so it was implemented.

[davemchine]

I live in the same city as ztfritz and while our county website has alot of information on home sites they do not have the builders name, floorplans, or who the owners were over the years (only the buyers since they went digital). They do have all the other information he mentioned.

If you want floorplans you have to do what Rusty said and go down to the city planning. Even so the info can be sketchy, you might just get the outline of the house with dimensions rather than seeing all of the interior walls etc.

Dave

[PeterB]

Thanks guys. While the online info was obviously nowhere near complete, it did at least tell me that the first purchase of this property was 1920 (it did also list all the owners), so obviously the house has to be at least that old (and probably older). What I was really after was the date of build, and maybe some floorplans, but of course this was just for interest and not really necessary. So I was happy to get the little info I did.