July 3, 2008

Digging Deep on a Property (and I’m not Talking Pockets Here)

I’m very impressed by the large quantities of information that is available online for a property on sites such as Redfin, Trulia, and Zillow. The Bay Area is very lucky this way, although not every city in the state, or every state in the country is the same. But if you are serious about a property, or want to know a bit more about your neighbor, there is a way to get out the shovel and dig a little deeper, so to speak. This online detective service is called Property Shark.

Property Shark currently covers California, Washington state, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Florida. They have conceivably mined every bit of info that is available about a house and put it in one place. They offer the ability to search any home 15 major markets in those states, as well as get information on foreclosures and comparables

While you can use the web site without having an account, you will not get the full spectrum of information. You can sign up and get all the goodies, on up to 8 homes per day (takes about 20 seconds). I signed up to see the data on my own home, and while there were a few errors, only one seems attributable to the program itself, the others were county records.

What do you get? Well, it’s a long list, but since I’m browsing anyway, I’ll detail it out for you.

• Basic Overview: Technical location (address, APN, subdividion, etc.), Age and size of location, Zoning info
• Ownership Data: Names, Address
• Title Document info with current owner and previous owner, along with date of sale and sale amount
• Last Sale Data, including initial mortgage amount(s)
• Maps
• Assessments and Exemptions
• Property Tax information
• Complete property description (which in my case had several errors)
• FEMA Flood Map
• Environmental Information
• Wildfire Map (with history of fires in the area)
• Fire Threat
• Valuation Model (sophisticated tool to value your home via comparables)
• Neighborhood Price History (there is an error in calculating the median $/sf for the property you are researching)
• Neighbor Links – info on last sale and sale price, plus link to their property shark page
• Demographic Maps – with population density, age, income

Property Shark also provides links to maps (Google, Yahoo, MapQuest), as well as links to local school districts, sex offender info, seismic hazards, and political contribution data.

I also checked into their Foreclosure information and found 3 homes for auction on the San Mateo County Courthouse Steps on Monday July 7th. I had previously had a hard time finding this information.

Overall, I found it to be a pretty comprehensive program, and might yield a bit more insight into a home you are considering.