Americans move a lot — on average, 11 or 12 times during their lives! Purchasing a home you’re planning to live in remains one of the most important things you’ll ever do. This is true whether planning to move on after a few years or you hope to spend the rest of your life there. Your home is, after all, your base, your safe spot, the place where you’re going to experience some of your happiest and most stressful moments alike. So, you want to come as close as you can to “try before you buy”, don’t you? You want to find out as much as possible before a home becomes yours. Luckily, there are helpful home history search tools that will help you find out anything you could ever want to know about a house.

Home History Search Tools

The internet makes your sleuthing efforts significantly easier. Consider adding these handy tools to your toolkit!

Online property title search

Title searchers are an essential part of the buying process. Title searchers and property records won’t just definitively reveal who owns the home. They will find whether the address is burdened by things like loans, tax liens, and even child support orders. These are things that could haunt the buyer if they’re not tackled properly.

As a responsible buyer, you’ll want to shell out for a professional title search. However, that doesn’t mean there’s nothing you can do on your own to find information. Property Shark will allow you to get started with your own, albeit preliminary, title search and history.

Sales history

Websites like Realty Records, Redfin, and Zillow all allow you quick and easy access to the sales history of any home you’re even remotely interested in — and though we’ve come to take this kind of easy access to information for granted, it still matters. Homes that are bought and sold much more often than is typical for the area might have hidden red flags. It is important to find out why a home has been on the market so many times!

General interest

You might be looking to find out more about the history of your house or property for reasons of personal curiosity. If so, you’ve got a different set of tools at your disposal. Folks who are looking to buy truly historic homes can check the National Register of Historic Places to uncover the historical significance of a property.

The local public library librarian, too, will have fascinating tidbits to share, but if you want to limit yourself to online searchers for now, What Was There? is a neat tool that will offer some insights into the history of the address.

Rehold will help you figure out who has lived in your prospective home before. If you want to go back much further, census records will help you out — though public records from before 1840 will only tell you about the “master of the house”.

If you’re on the more morbid side, or simply terrified of ghosts, Died In House is the tool for you. This service won’t just tell you whether (and how) someone died in a property you’re considering, it will also share whether the home has a history of illegal activity or house fires. Scary people may come to your new property if it was previously associated with criminal acts. This is something you’ll definitely want to know about!

Historical interior photographs

We’re all used to being able to easily access staged interior photos of any home that’s currently listed. Not many websites are going to show you what a home used to look like on the inside, though, but Realtor sometimes shows interested buyers not only current but also historical, interior photographs.

This might give you some interior design inspiration, but it could also tell you something about the previous owners who used to live in the home, or even the kinds of repairs or renovations that were carried out. It’s also a potentially valuable tool for private investigators.

Finally, don’t discount human intel as part of your home history search tools toolbox! Your realtor will be a fountain of knowledge, but so are the neighbors. Sure, they might not exactly be thrilled to tell you all about hidden damage (or even know), but by knocking on some doors, you’re quite likely to be able to find out more about the history of both the property and the community — including the most fascinating stories that you will never be able to find on the internet!

Discount Window and Door of Omaha

At Discount Window and Door of Omaha, we are committed to providing the best quality doors and replacement windows. We employ the most skilled installers to ensure the highest standard of quality service. Our Omaha door and window installers are highly trained, certified industry professionals with years of experience, including some second and third-generation employees.

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