Zillow is almost always dead wrong unless you live in a homogenous subdivision. But the actual legal information is just a click away. Most people don't know how easy it is to look up real property taxes online. Nearly every county in my state uses the qpublic site architecture that gives square footage, bedrooms, bathrooms, taxes, sales history, a sketch and sometimes photos. There is a veritable mine of information out there....for a small fee in our state you can search the superior court records by name, address or subdivision (plat maps) and see actual photocopies of mortgage documents, deeds, foreclosure papers, etc. And all this is available without even a social security number.

There is pretty much no such thing as privacy any more. Just look yourself up on here: http://www.spokeo.com/ and see how much info people can get about you just by giving your name!

If you have access to LexisNexis, you can pretty much find out every single detail about everyone for free. Before we bought our land, I used lexis to look it up- I not only found out what the owners had paid for it, but also that they had an adjustable rate mortgage, what their property taxes were, and when their introductory ARM was set to expire. Helped us feel more confident making a lowball offering knowing their payments were about to go way up!

I wouldn't look up all of that info for random friends houses for no reason though - and if I did, I certainly wouldn't tell them about it!

Yes, agree! How dumb is that, to snoop and then ask questions or offer comments that make it obvious you are a nosy parker??

I hate that we have lost so much of our privacy. We even have the digital power usage meters that report how you use energy by the hour and actually record the data in 15-minute increments. So now someone can effectively tell what time I get up, when I do my laundry, when I turn on and off my electronics, etc. How do celebrities and the super-wealthy keep their business private because I'll bet that you can't see Bill Gates' house or his property taxes on Zillow.

mtnrdredux, in defense of some of your visitors, when you use google maps, etc. it does give you the option of the satellite/air view, so maybe no intentional snooping is taking place. I use the satellite view to locate any landmarks that might help with getting to my destination.

Reminds me of an old friend of mine. Highly educated, but if I bought a new blouse she'd ask me what I paid for it!

I don't find it odd that people look at your home on Zillow (I use Google Earth, the download) just because it's fun. I even look at my house!

But to look up property taxes and private info, because it's open to the public? I would feel guilty if I did that.

I agree with Fun. We've lost so much of our privacy.

Speaking of, we just acquired a new acre next to our acre. The guy selling us the land told my DH he looked at our deed. I had no idea it was public record and it kind of pi$$ed me off!

mntrdredux, I'm not clear from your OP, are these friends/aquaintances doing the snooping or potential buyers? If it's buyers that seems legit, but people you know - just weird.

Spokeo has me living in an apartment I haven't stepped foot inside since 1986.

Property taxes are shown in my listing.

I looked at the property taxes of every property I viewed before I looked at it. The property taxes here are so strange that it's really a necessity. I looked at a house with property taxes that were 8 times what I pay here, and in the same neighborhood. You don't want to find out that your monthly carrying costs are going to be $500+ more a month than you thought after you make an offer, do you?

I don't think we can blame the computer age either really. Well, it does make it easier, but it has always been public record how much was paid for a house, if there is a home equity line against it, taxes, what you owe to the mortgage company. Now it's much easier to get the info while sitting in your jammies drinking coffee.

Our real estate agent certainly didn't ask how much we still owed on our house, she had the info when she showed up--she said "all this is public information".

But in regards to the OP, people with an ounce of sense wouldn't bring up anything like that in a conversation.... (except the property view from the air--I love Google Earth too) Some people just don't have filters.

I don't think it's necessarily someone being "nosy". If I were looking at purchasing property, I'd certainly look up the info. Property assessment IS public. Even before you could view it on the internet, you could go to the tax assessor's office and view it. One thing I want to know (if I'm buying a piece of property) is what previous owners paid. Here in my area, mortgage info is not shown (it may show if there is a lien, but no details), nor are there pictures, etc.

I also look if property near us sells. Not that we plan on selling, but it's something good to know if we ever do.

But no, I don't look up the info just to be looking up and if I did, I wouldn't bring it up in conversation! LOL

I dont think Mountain redux was talking about potential buyers--- obviously you'd want all the information about a property before you make an offer. If I'm not mistaken, she was talking about people who come to their house as invited guests and make comments that reveal they've been looking. YEs, it's public record, but still, who lets people know they've been poking around??

If I were in a service business making a bid on a large project at someone's house I would probably check them out to make sure they owned the place first. And because I'm human, I might take what I learned into consideration when making the estimate.

We get a version of that now....my MIL used to always tell me to get a ballpark estimate of a job on the phone, before a workman comes in person because she said the cost goes up exponentially with the length of the driveway. Our drive is a half mile long and she was right.

I'll admit I do look at property tax listings, but mostly for business (buying & selling properties) but I would never bring it up during a conversation. The mapping definitely helps with driving and finding locations in unfamiliar areas when traveling to the city. In our area all tax listings are available online so I can see if my real estate taxes are inline with others in the area. I know everyone in my area so it seems somewhat like an invasion of privacy because the listing also shows who has paid and not paid.

To those who have used Spokeo, do you pay the subscription fee? Is it worth it? Or once you pay for the subscription are there "per use" fees? Would it help at all with identity theft - as far as knowing others out there who have the same name and might try to take advantage of certain things. For example I starting getting funny emails to my gmail account....casting call invitations, high school diploma offers (but I already have a master's) and a fully completed insurance application.... and thus learned of another gal with my name and similar email address (insurance company forgot to include the numbers in the email address so it came to me instead of her). I immediately contacted insurance company about that one--if I'd was the other gal I'd have been furious, although she probably never found out about it.

Mtnrd is not referring to the zestimate but the fact that when you scroll down on the zillow facts for your house it usually lists the amount that you bought the house for and your property taxes. It is weird to have so much information available for everyone to see but at the same time it does help a homeowner keep in touch with value trends for their area. For those interested you can also switch the zestimate chart to show the number of views that your page has received, the chart style was recently changed and is harder to get an accurate reading for each day as it is more fluid but it is still sort of neat.

Sorry, by "visiting", I meant a social visit. I thought the social aspect was implied but a lot of you thought I meant buyers. But who meets buyers? I think that is frowned upon and I never did. Plus that to me is a "showing" not a "visit". But most of you seemed to think I meant a buyer.

I mean people who come over for a party or event or fundraiser, etc. Not friends per se but social visitors .....

Hill - looking at it for business purposes is legit. Looking at it to get a leg-up on the time-honored hobby of trying to suss out the socioeconomic pecking order, is bad form! : )

KSWL - You are correct. And I know exactly what you mean about getting upcharged, by everyone for everything. There is little that makes me angrier. I am pretty progressive and liberal, I elect people who would raise my taxes to help others, and I am the first one to say that income inequality has gotten out of hand. But people soaking you "because they can" are enemy number one.

Favorite story: guy spec'ing an AV system for our family room. Gives our GC a big fat quote. I google one line item and it retails -retails - for half of what is in the quote. I send an email, very politely, asking him for more info on what his quote includes. Response - they withdraw the quote and no longer respond. Good riddance. DH did it himself. What do contractors like these think clients are supposed to do with a quote? Doodle on it? Who wouldn't try to make some sense of it?

Tina, I am talking about social situations only

Bee - yes of course its always been a matter of public record. But who, other than maybe a divorce lawyer doing discovery, ever went to the trouble? We owned our last house in a trust and purposely had no name on the listing. In the case of the buyers, I know all about them from their wedding story in the NYT, his professional website, property records, and even her Twitters! Of course I don't know them socially and used the info to negotiate, and judge their ability to close (oh and it was kind of interesting, too, to see her twitter excitedly about OUR house).

Pal,
Of course property taxes are in a listing. In our old town, with a mil rate of --- are you sitting down? ---- 3.8%, your damn sure you know the taxes. But until the last five years or so, unless you were looking to buy, you probably wouldn't know social acquaintances tax bills. And of course no excuse for commenting on them!

Kswl - yes, the Zillow algorithm is so far off, assessments if they are current are closer but still can be very far off. Id love to only pay taxes on my Zillow number, LOL. One thing about a GC never finishing is that our assessment is still very out of date, lol

Beagles - I know that it is out there, I just wish it wasn't. The person who mentioned the view from the air had gotten emailed directions to my house on the evite, and in his particular case we were one mile away and one turn. He google earthed to check us out. It's just odd, imho.

Fun - that's something about the electric! I think I am going to do more to guard my privacy. Already we dont do Facebook (after random people getting po'd about who we had "friended", like who cares?). I am on linked in but I turn down every request. That way someone can find me that way if they choose, and I can respond if I choose. But when you start linking people, how do you say it makes no sense to link to you and I dont want to do it?

Chispa, I know, I use Google Maps all the time. I still found it a bit of an odd comment .

Oakley - I can't think of a reason I would give someone as to why I looked up their home on Zillow, or looked up property taxes, etc etc. And so, if I did do that, I certainly wouldnt casually mention it.

Mtnrd--I completely agree with you on this one. Some people are just plain rude. Good grief!

When we lived in a previous home on over 100+ acres, it had a long gated driveway. When I gave directions and got to the "ring the bell at the gate" part, I could hear the service people's estimates go higher over the phone with their response.

And I'd never heard of spokeo before today, but I certainly wouldn't pay for its info. It has my husband and me listed as Jews and me as Middle Eastern. Yeah, right... My parents were from Alabama, and my name's definitely not Jewish. There were other errors as well--you have to wonder where their misinformation even comes from??

LOL, Suja. ahh, 100 acres, how lovely. I do imagine the contractors' eyes got progressively bigger as they got up the driveway!

Always be ready to respond by asking--by name--about the urologist they've been seeing. Be prepared to discuss him at length, and respond to any protestations that they're not seeing a urologist by pretending you can't hear them.

Googling a mortgage is called "moogling." I'm not making that up. And I've done it plenty of times when I was shopping for a house. If I've ever moogled a friend, though, you can be sure I'd get my eyeteeth plucked out before I'd admit it.

I'm not willing to play along with the "it's always been out there" meme. Ease of access to others' information has increased so much in degree that it's now truly a difference in kind. Europeans made mighty attempts to deem private information as private property, but of course Americans never met a corporation they didn't want to roll over for, and so we just accept it, no matter how damaging that information may prove to be to us.

We like to do "Word of the Day" at the dinner table, maybe I will teach the kids how to moogle.

I found this excerpt (hat tip Marcolo).

The Boston Globe article: Confessions of a Mortgage Stalker reveals the downside of all that available information.
Phase 3: Full-blown addiction

It would happen during my toddler's nap, when I was too tired to read something of substance and too proud to watch Jerry Springer, which, looking back, would have been the dignified choice. I had already looked up the mortgages of every prospective seller we were facing, even for B-list houses. Then I started to wonder: How much debt does my agent have? Does she need this deal done fast? Seemed prudent to know. How about the seller's agent? It was then that I slid quickly into a "what-the-hell" phase. Let's see what my husband's boss has for a mortgage. His boss's boss. Two former co-workers. That really cute guy from freshman year. A prominent local housing economist who has been bearish on the market. (I thought there would be ironic comedy if he himself had a ginormous mortgage; there wasn't, he doesn't.) And then, the moogling that led to the intervention: looking up my psychiatrist's mortgage. I didn't find it, though I now know plenty about the mortgage for his office, where I sit and discuss my neuroses. Definitely some irony there.

Having lived once in your area of Ct, I'm sure your new friends and neighbors are obsessed with property values. Give the nasty cyber-stalkers the stink eye. It's all public information, but that doesn't excuse them bringing it up socially.

Yikes! I had no idea about all the info on Spokeo...just typed my phone#, since that's what telemarketers have. I didn't pay to join, but was still able to see an aerial view of my property, with name of road and town. Also available--my astrological sign, number of household members (wrong), and neighbors' property values.

I typed in my mother's phone#. The woman has never owned a computer in her life, but there she (and her location) was, listed as a female in her 70's, living alone. This quote is at top of page: "It's 100% Private, Safe, and Secure to Join!" Not very reassuring.

Mtnrdredux, your guest was rude.

I misunderstood the original post, because I saw Real Estate I guess...I will admit to looking things up out of curiousity but I was also raised that any discussion of money outside the family was really inappropriate. I have trouble even talking about getting paid at work, and once went almost 5 months without a paycheck in one office, because I didn't want to talk about it.

I think a lot of people have given up their own privacy and it has dragged the rest of us into it. I assume there is a satellite that knows where I am at all times and all my other info is out there, and that this information is tracked and sold for various purposes.

My tenants all tweet and so I have seen pictures of people mooning on the roof of my (rented out)house, pictures of one of them passed out on the stairs, and references to the "r@pe room" (basement, which is a little creepy); and the "sl_t shack" (meaning the house in general when one of the girls is alone for the weekend.) It's all that twenty-something Northeast crude boy/girl humour and behavior, but instead of it being between friends, it is between a large group of cyber friends and anyone else who uses google. I found the twitter trying to look up the proper spelling of one of the roomate's unusual last names, when I didn't have it on hand.

Personally, I think it is both rude and more than a bit intrusive. I've not heard of Zillow, but have heard of the Spokeo website.

Our "neighbor" doesn't bother with those sites, he goes right to the township/county website to look up real estate taxes, etc., looks to see what everyone is paying in yearly taxes, and checks to see who's paid and who hasn't. Ugh, I wish I had that much free time on my hands (he isn't retired, lol). However, in the event I did have alot of free time, there are so many other things on my to-do list, that researching others personal real estate matters wouldn't even be on that list.

If I were looking to sell/buy, I might check out a home or property I was interested in acquiring, but just to be nosey, no way.

Pal,
I also misread your post (the last one). On my first read I though you had a rented "outhouse", not a (rented out)house. The privacy issue reminds me, somewhere in my memory, I don't know why, is a story you once told of an exH sending a X-rated photo to your assistant, "accidentally".

I inadvertently came across Twitters from the teen daughter of someone prominent locally, and the teen was talking about her new, "secret" piercing. OMG, our parents had it easy.

WIP08 - I think so too. If you are looking to sell or buy, all is fair. If you are looking to gossip, have some common sense.

I look up my neighbors, friends, acquaintances, doctors, accountant - well just about anybody I can think of. Why? Because I'm super nosey and find anything regarding local real estate interesting. I would probably just pop from all the public info in other states. Texas is a non-disclosure state so sales records are not available.

However, I would never tell anyone. It's my little dirty secret.

I have been looking for a house for a while and have used real estate cyber snooping to help me evaluate homes for purchase. I am continually ASTOUNDED by what I find when I Google addresses and names. Blogs that bare souls, salary information, unflattering newspaper stories, court records, PTO information, R rated twitter accounts, ad nauseum.

That being said I would NEVER bring up sensitive cyber information in a social conversation. I am also now very careful about what and how I post things on the internets.

Sorry for the misunderstanding. I'll admit to reading through the original post hastily.

I've never used Zillow or Spokeo, but I have checked other sites and googled our names and phone number, but we have an unlisted number and a po box, so far have found very little personal info online. Of course someone could look at the tax records, but that really doesn't bother me.

tina

kellyeng - Wow, you may even have me beat for how often taxnetusa is visited!

Yep, we are limited on what we can see in Texas. I was so disappointed when they removed the sketches a few years ago!

I have been using sites like that for a long time - great way to find out who the owner of a property is.

"In the case of the buyers, I know all about them from their wedding story in the NYT, his professional website, property records, and even her Twitters! Of course I don't know them socially and used the info to negotiate, and judge their ability to close (oh and it was kind of interesting, too, to see her twitter excitedly about OUR house)."

Hmmm, I was generally feeling the vibe with you mtn, till the comment above. I know this probably sounds harsh but: when it suits your own purpose, it sounds like you're certainly using all available means of obtaining info yourself including more than is necessary for a stated purpose. Does a real estate transaction actually require or even benefit from one of the parties having absorbed the other's wedding announcements and twitter feeds?

I put all this into the category of that famous comment by Scott McNealy of Sun: "You have no privacy-get over it". The genie of technology is certainly out of the bottle and information that is available to the public will be viewed by, well, the public.

Is it unsettling? Heck yes. Is it the new reality? Heck yes.

Ann

M., when you said he looked at aerial photos, I thought you meant Google Earth. I didn't know Zillow has views like that on their website.

It was wrong mentioning the snooping he did, but OTOH, if he went to GE to see your house, I can certainly cut him slack on that one. It's not being nosy, it's just interesting and fun to look at homes from the air or street.

I've looked at all my neighbor's houses, along with mine. And for people I don't know very well but know where they live, I love looking at their backyards. lol.

Although going to Zillow is snooping, it's also normal. The mistake was telling you or anyone else. I would feel like my privacy was invaded.

Runninginplace,

I think there is an essential difference here. The potential buyers Put the story of their wedding in NYT, have a website, and Twitter without privacy screens about their life.

I am not on Facebook, I don't tweet, I don't have a website, so I think my life should be pretty unpublished in that regard, but if I Google myself, I can still find a fair amount information.

If someone is putting it out there purposely for almost all to see (in this age of cyber narcissism), they are kind of asking to be scrutinized. But while public record is public, you have to specifically look for it. The joke of it is that there are things like HIPAA, that have "privacy" in the title, but what that means is that while a physician can be disciplined for discussing a case where someone might overhear it, all your personal information can be transmitted electronically by fax or internet for insurance purposes to be looked at by a bazillion people on the way to rejecting your claim.

But you are right, there Is no privacy.