Police reports.

Police Reports, Google, a reputable/well entrenched Real Estate Agent (looking for future business as opposed to the one time quick sale).

bry911, you made my morning!

And ... the instant you close or decide based on the report's contents, the situation will change. Someone will move in or out, someone will be arrested, someone will break up with their SO and acquire a "front yard maniac" who drops in at all hours to stand in the yard and scream at the ex.

I grew up living next door to a murderer. He did his time in prison for killing his wife in a fit of rage and was released. He was a very nice old man by the time my parents moved in. We visited him, did errands for him and in turn he taught us to garden.

Our city has a searchable database of complaints made about properties -- things lik e trash in the yard, not cutting grass, home in dis-repair, etc. You have to search by address, and the owners name is not attached, so a property may have changed hands and no longer be a problem.

If you knock on my door asking about the neighbors in the area, you will learn I mind my own business and don't give out information about my neighbors to strangers that come to my door. I will share information and opinions about the school system, local parks and recreation activities, etc. Private info about the neighbors? No.

Hire a private detective before you make any move in life (said sarcastically).

Thank you all for the comments - informative, sarcastic and humorous! My friend was quite unsettled by the discovery. Of course, it is impossible to find a place with "perfect" neighbors. It's all about personal tolerance levels and trade-offs. On the other hand, $400K or so for a new home is a major investment that merits a careful research. Property values in our metro area have been going crazy lately.

If someone knocks on my friend's door to find out more about the neighborhood, she wouldn't have much to share. She and her husband know a couple of families across the street, the families on each side of their house and the family behind them, but not more. All are regular folks without any major pathologies. She and her husband never met the criminal and his parents.

They live on a dead-end street. There's a gate at the end leading to elementary school grounds - a soccer field, track, playground and covered basketball court. There are always kids (elementary through middle school age) hanging out after school hours. Playing ball, riding their bikes on the track, shooting hoops, etc. The criminal's home is right next to the gate and backs to the school grounds. She says it's a nice, well-kept house surrounded with manicured lawn and camelia plants that bloom beautifully. She was shocked to come across an old article about the crime in the local newspaper when she Googled the elementary school reviews, as she and her husband contemplated selling their house. A courthouse file check confirmed the location.

The courthouse files are open to the public, but the file system is cumbersome to navigate. You need to know the person's name to pull the files. The names of the current property owners are not secret, but one has to drive over to the property records office to look them up. Also, there are online databases used by landlords and employers for background checks. The databases usually require a paid subscription. A professional agency could do the research faster and more efficiently than a regular homebuyer.

One more note to add: I've checked the state sex offender registry online just now. Zero results for my friend's criminal neighbor and his residence was not shown on the maps. Makes me wonder how complete the registry is. It seriously gives me the creeps that he lived next to an elementary school. Who knows if there were any "incidents" that were never reported to the police...

OMG!! Does every neighborhood have its own "Shirtless Guy"??? Because we certainly do and I know Bry is not by us (we are in a condo)!!

Lucky for use he actually owns and wears shirts. Ours seems to be "Shirtless Before Noon Guy".

"This is something that came up in a conversation with my friend. She had
learned that there was a convicted criminal five houses down the street
from her place."

Like Martha Stewart? Yikes!

LOL, sarahsocal! Our local "Shirtless Guy" lives right behind us. Wears shorts and a bandana, but no shirt when he does yard work. His backyard is expensively landscaped and immaculately maintained. He's quite fit and athletic-looking, though. Unlike his wife!

My former neighbor was the "shirtless guy". Maybe he moved to your neighborhood? Almost 70 with grey chest hair and a black Grecian Formula comb-over - so natural looking!

Didn't know MS downloaded children's porn.

BTW, if this person was indeed convicted of a sex crime, I'm pretty sure he would have to register. When you check the registry, also make sure to find out what sex offense we're talking about.

I'm friends with a lot of cops and they've said that you'd be surprised who you're neighbours really are and what's gone on and who's been arrested for what. And they mean EVERY neighbourhood. Not just the low class areas. Every area.

The vast majority of people live in ignorance about what's really going on around them. And the vast majority of the time it doesn't matter.

If you're afraid of every little possible thing that could happen, you'll miss out on life.

Plus, isn't it always the "quiet, nice and polite neighbour" that snaps and goes on a shooting rampage? Maybe living next door to a biker gang member would be safer than the college professor who keeps to himself.

I understand the concern, but society poses all kinds of ever-changing risks, and worrying about this or spending money on investigating potential neighbors is not a very productive activity. As others have pointed out, there are so many defects in possible approaches that the results of such efforts will likely have little, if any, practical value. Putting energy into finding a nice home in a nice section of town, and letting the worries go, will be the best approach.

Bry, I wonder what your neighbors say about you...?!

Mine would probably say that I am the odd guy that never wears shoes, even when walking in the woods to hunt wild mushrooms, or when walking his kids to the bus stop. Even in the winter.

Oh....You would absolutely be "Shoeless Joe" - I imagine the story being somewhat along the lines of - Joe once owned a pair of shoes but in a tragic and sad incident the left shoe, jealous of the favoritism Joe always showed the right shoe, viciously attacked the right shoe. Joe still hasn't gotten over it yet, we told him that somewhere out in that big wide world, there is another shoe that is perfect for him, he just has to get back in the saddle and put his foot out there.

As for what my neighbors say about me, they are really not all that humorous...I imagine my teenagers will dominate the conversation for a while, they are freakishly tall. As for me, I have no idea, I would imagine it is either something about my workshop or my cars but who knows, I can't imagine it being too far from accurate whatever it is.

Zero results for my friend's criminal neighbor and his residence was not
shown on the maps. Makes me wonder how complete the registry is.

Well you said, "He was in his 20's, unmarried, jobless and living with his parents.
Apparently, he traded the porn. The police caught him in the act. He was
sentenced to 5 years in prison. His parents still live in my friend's
neighborhood."Apparently he moved out of his parents house. The flag is on the person, not the address.

Just love the GW'ers humor!

Speaking of neighborhood research, has anyone seen this cool website?

Lifestyle profiles by ZIP code

It shows customer groups ("segments") prevailing in each ZIP code. This helps companies and businesses tailor their marketing and advertising. If you click on a segment you'll get a lifestyle snapshot for that customer group. Some information is free and some is available only to subscribers.

In the past, I worked for a marketing agency that subscribed to this service. Later, my DH and I used it to choose where to rent an office for our business.

bry, I'd like to know the rules that Psycho-killer insisted upon.

nc, I never would have imagined you to be bearfoot, ever. What a surprise. Just goes to show that behind our screens, we could be anybody.

Like ncrealestateguy in his neighborhood, I'm the shoeless one in ours. If the back asphalt is very hot, I walk across quickly. When the sidewalk gets too hot, I reluctantly wear shoes.

You shoeless people are just lost soles....

bry911-

Sometimes they are also too tight-laced...

Too tight laced, yes, but never tongue - tied.

TeteTete, I know what you mean about being almost anyone behind the screens. There is one regular poster here who I had a mental picture of for over three years, only to find out that I was imagining the opposite gender than was true!

@ tetetete - I really don't remember all of PK's rules, but most of them had to do with her son was allowed special privileges while in her house, or some crazy rule. The event when we noticed something was wrong was when my kids were playing in her yard, and my brother, who she knew was supervising our kids, went over to grab the kids. She not so patiently told him that no one was allowed in her yard, she would send my kids home, when she wanted. Also, her son was allowed to do anything he wanted at her house, including "his house, he wins all arguments." Maybe the oddest thing, though, was when she fed our kids sandwiches for lunch and sent them home with a bill, and yes she charged cafe prices.

Great stories, it does make sense to do a little checking before moving into a new area. Houses have tiny lots and hundreds of people living in close proximity is a little unsettling. Horses are a good reason to have space between neighbors! These days a few houses in every neighborhood have sociopath sons in their twenties and thirties still living at home, vacant eyed, unemployed, possible drugs, etc. A sign of the times. My current neighborhood has renters on the right, afore mentioned socio sons in back, crazy old coot on the left who keeps collecting cars..looking forward to an upcoming move, much more space than now!

So I thought I'd just put in a thought about the sex-offender registry. Just be aware that it's not what you probably think it is. We all assume that it's stuff like rape or child porn or the obviously criminal stuff. Yes, there's that - the people that we really want not living next door to an elementary school.

But it also has plenty of kids who back when they were 16 had sex with their 15yo girlfriend. Or the couple who were caught having sex on the beach one night. The high school kid who had naughty photos of his girlfriend on his phone (that she voluntarily sent him). You probably saw the one in the news about the college kid who had sex with a gal on one of those hook-up apps and she lied about her age - against the girl's wishes the judge has banned him from the internet (he's a computer science major) and of course, he's on the sex-offender registry for 25 years or something like that, because her mom couldn't find her one night and reported her missing to the police.

We have no control over the insane people who buy the house. Can the neighbors have the right to veto a buyer? It's only fair...

@ c9pilot

My favorite is the kid who had pictures of a 15 or 16 year old boy on his phone and is now on the registry...The pictures were of himself...

'Can the neighbors have the right to veto a buyer? It's only fair...',

Sure, the neighbors could enjoy their veto rights... the fair thing to do is they agree to carry seller's selling and housing cost after they veto the first offer from an "unfit new neighbor" until they find the suitable one.

jn3344-

"Can the neighbors have the right to veto a buyer? It's only fair...." You're being ironic, right? If not, who gets to set the standards? We used to have something like that in many parts of the country. They were called restrictive deed covenants, and they prevented certain people considered to be undesireables -- such as Asians, Blacks, and Jews -- from purchasing houses in certain areas. One way this worked was that these covenants were in place neighborhood-wide; if an owner tried to violate this by selling to one of these "undesireables," and it was objected to by one of the neighbors, the property could become forfeited. Do you really want to own a home in an area where the neighbors get to tell you who you can sell to?

It's interesting and enlightening to read everyone's perspective on this! C9Pilot certainly makes a good point. The type of offense committed can be verified by checking courthouse files, but those could be in another county or state. Again, it's something that's easier to do for a pro than for a regular homebuyer.

The main difference between due diligence on future neighbors and restrictions on who can buy the property is that the former is voluntary for the buyer who decides what he's willing to compromise on. The latter is imposing a third party's will on both the buyer and the seller.

A potential return of a criminal convicted for child porn in an year or two would be a big concern for a family with children, especially if they expect their kids walk past the offender's place to the school.

On the other side, if the buyers are childless and rarely have children visiting them, it wouldn't be as much of a concern for them.

One more example: another family I know bought a house for over $800K in an upscale neighborhood. They landscaped the bare backyard and put in a tree house, play structure and a patio with a pergola. They also installed a privacy fence and green hedge. All was done by licensed contractors with proper permits. The backyard was transformed into a beautiful outdoor space for the family and their friends to hang out. However, their neighbor next door hated how they re-did their backyard and fired off multiple complaints to the city. Inspectors came in and investigated: everything was done to code and other neighbors reported no excessive noise or public order violations. Still, that neighbor wouldn't back down and stop filing complaints.

If that family's house was for sale, and I were a potential buyer, the long trail of that neighbor's complaints in the city/county files would put me on an alert. I would make sure that the improvements were done to code, and I would weigh the possibility of a nutcase neighbor against the benefits of this particular house.

This was an interesting thread. Everybody wants to know what the neighborhood is like before they move in. Due diligence is done and everybody's happy and in two years Mr McNasty moves in across the way.

Yes, I was being "ironic." Christopher H gets it.

In my state, the sex offender registry will list what the offense was (2nd degree offense, etc.) and then then you can look up what this actually means.

We have: The part-year drug dealer who lives diagonally across the street and drives a boom-boom car. The police are on it. The boom-boom car, by the way, has no less than 4 video screens including one that flips down on the inside of the driver's side visor. I dunno about that. I don't know where he winters, but it's generally not here. I'd like it if he summered, falled and springed there, too. It's not even his house; it's his uncle's.

Then we have a bunch of college professors. Like, a bunch. A couple lawyers. Some young retirees who give kickass parties. The close relative of a legendary musician lost tragically at a young age in a plane crash. The relative is very musical, and very nice. A nice young paramedic who just bought the house next to the drug dealer. I guess that could come in handy for just-in-case purposes. Lots of renters (mostly graduate students). A Guatemalan groundskeeper I suspect has a colorful and glamorous backstory. Damn language barrier. A goodly collection of miscreants and ne'er-do-wells.

Such is life in a gentrifying community in a historic district. I expected some of it--but not the good, delightful, life-affirming and perfectly magical parts, of which there are many. Against all expectations to the contrary, I totally dig it. The drug dealer can suck it, though.

You can check your neighbors, but you can't check their visitors and guests. When I lived in Connecticut, there was a sad case where a convicted child molester got out of jail and went to live with his parents, and registered at that address. Then he moved in with a new girlfriend in the next town, but did not change his address. He abducted and then killed a young girl living in the same apartment complex.

Knowing where the bad guys live doesn't make you any safer.

if the guy is still in prison, he would not be listed as a registered sex offender where he used to live with his parents.

????

If "the guy is still in prison" he's not a threat to any children.

I dealt with the problem by moving to a place where the neighbors aren't right on top of me. Back at my condo, a guy moved in above me who was apparently dealing coke, and who had the nasty dog and the nasty disposition to match. NO more condos for me!