How to Search History on Personal Property

You can research the history of a property online.

You may be in the market for a house or you may simply be curious to know about the history of your own home, your neighbor's home or of an apartment building in the area. Whatever the case, the Internet has some useful tools for finding out when a home was built, how often it's been sold, what it's worth now and in the past and otherwise searching the history of the property.

Instructions

1. Visit zillow.com.

   Zillow is free online real estate database, but unlike many other real estate sites, has information on properties regardless of whether they are on the market or not, and the site's information includes a good deal of historical data.

2. Enter the address you are interested in searching and click "Go."

3. Review the map and information box that displays for the property as it generally includes the year the house was built.

4. Click "Details" at the bottom of the display box to open up more information on the property. The information will vary from one property to the next, but generally includes sales history and changes in assessed property value over time.

   Note that you can click "Time Period" button on the graph to provide various historical overviews.

Tips & Warnings

• County offices for property tax, property assessments and the recorder of deeds provide publicly available information on a property's history, and many offices make the information available online. Contact the appropriate county office in your area to see what online and offline information resources are available.

References

• Zillow