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Ask HN: Why is home property information so public?

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Re: Ask HN: Why is home property information so public?

#11

Post by dan-robertson »

Well the tax assessment is public probably so that people can see that the government is acting honestly.

I don’t know if there’s a particularly good reason for ownership to be public. Some countries only have transaction dates/prices but not names published. Some countries make everyone’s individual tax returns publicly available. I don’t know why the us found this particular balance.

I assume that Zillow would get a load of angry emails if they published ownership information and it isn’t worth enough to them to publish it.

Re: Ask HN: Why is home property information so public?

#12

Post by Atotalnoob »

a_square_peg wrote: post #10

The United States has a policy about government data - including weather (e.g. NOAA) and GPS, to be made freely available to the public. Your property data, collected at the county level, falls under this category so they are accessible to everyone. However, I think Zillow would be prevented from publishing the owner name, since it would probably be classified as Personal Identifiable Information (PII).

If you aren't following any regulations, PII can be published.

You only have to worry about PII if you have to be compliant with a standard that prevents it.

Re: Ask HN: Why is home property information so public?

#13

Post by lxgr »

Digory wrote: post #6

1. The Public needs to know if they are permitted to be at a place or not. Or even if they can claim it. Homesteading in the US (claiming public land as private land) only ended in 1986. 2. Because police need to know who belongs at a place, and who to exclude. 3. The government wants to know who to tax for the land. 4. Generally, we think the government's information should be publicly available, not hidden.

1. is possible without knowing the owner’s identity – “public” (and maybe whether that means federal or state) and “private” seems to be enough.

2. breaks down when you consider rentals. A tenant might be legally allowed to deny access to a landlord in some circumstances. Tenants are usually not registered in property registers.

For 3., how does the information for taxation have to be public? The government also needs to know my pay history to tax me, and that’s not public either.

4. if it’s the government’s information about me, should I really get absolutely no say in how it’s published?

Re: Ask HN: Why is home property information so public?

#14

Post by 13of40 »

beardyw wrote: post #5

Because people have been living in houses for millennia and such an idea of privacy would only have emerged in the last few decades.

In fact, only two or three decades ago it was standard for the telephone service to print everyone's name, address, and phone number in a big book, distribute it to every house and charge you $5 a month extra if you wanted to opt out of the list.

Re: Ask HN: Why is home property information so public?

#15

Post by lxgr »

beardyw wrote: post #5

Because people have been living in houses for millennia and such an idea of privacy would only have emerged in the last few decades.

The idea of a property register is much younger than a few millenia, though, so that's not a good argument for its default privacy level.

The United States are also younger than even a single millenium.

Re: Ask HN: Why is home property information so public?

#16

Post by pixl97 »

lxgr wrote: post #13
Digory wrote: post #6

1. The Public needs to know if they are permitted to be at a place or not. Or even if they can claim it. Homesteading in the US (claiming public land as private land) only ended in 1986. 2. Because police need to know who belongs at a place, and who to exclude. 3. The government wants to know who to tax for the land. 4. Generally, we think the government's information should be publicly available, not hidden.

1. is possible without knowing the owner’s identity – “public” (and maybe whether that means federal or state) and “private” seems to be enough. 2. breaks down when you consider rentals. A tenant might be legally allowed to deny access to a landlord in some circumstances. Tenants are usually not registered in property registers. For 3., how does the information for taxation have to be public? The government also need…

>4. if it’s the government’s information about me, should I really get absolutely no say in how it’s published?

This is not the governments information about you... This is the 'publics' information about you and who owns property in their communities.

Stop thinking of the government as some kind of corporation, and instead the executive will of the populace itself.

Re: Ask HN: Why is home property information so public?

#17

Post by smugma »

13of40 wrote: post #14
beardyw wrote: post #5

Because people have been living in houses for millennia and such an idea of privacy would only have emerged in the last few decades.

In fact, only two or three decades ago it was standard for the telephone service to print everyone's name, address, and phone number in a big book, distribute it to every house and charge you $5 a month extra if you wanted to opt out of the list.

<15 years ago a friend went and got thousands of signatures to make phone books opt in vs opt out in SF. He did some sort of stunt where he collected over a thousand phone books and took a picture of them in front of city hall or other public place.

Re: Ask HN: Why is home property information so public?

#18

Post by bozhark »

LinuxBender wrote: post #2

I do not have an answer for your specific question and I am not an expert on this but for what it's worth one can purchase properties in the name of a trust or a business. It will still be public but a trust can be anonymously named in some states. This can have property tax implications depending on the type of trust and the state so review the options in your location with a lawyer knowledgeable in trusts and prope…

Trust, business, LLC, foundation, church.

There’s many options

Re: Ask HN: Why is home property information so public?

#19

Post by benlivengood »

Why wouldn't ownership be public? See the recent uproar[0] over the semi-anonymous purchase of land near Travis AFB. This is a clear case where market inefficiency is bad; individual sellers need to know when markets are changing and a single entity is willing to pay above assumed market rates for a large contiguous region. Anyone in favor of strong markets should favor full transparency of real estate ownership and transactions. My fear is that otherwise we'll revert to de facto feudalism where the wealthiest entities can acquire and lease out virtually all real property.

[0] https://www.kqed.org/news/11957208/near-1-billion-land-purch...

Re: Ask HN: Why is home property information so public?

#20

Post by cpursley »

prepend wrote: post #7

I don’t think the name is important for Zillow site visitors so they don’t publish it. The value and features are important. I imagine Zillow sells marketing databases with actual names. And of course you can just go to the county assessor to look up the name. But I don’t think Zillow even links to their source.

They probably just get the info from data wholesalers who get it by scrapping government assessor databases (ATTOM, etc).
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