Property Detectives

By Linda S. Perlman

Are you curious about your neighbor? Do you want to know the sales price of the property on the next block? Have any building permits been issued or has the property been registered as a rental unit? Thanks (or no thanks) to the Internet, there is a multitude of information available online about property ownership and it is easy to find.

Let’s assume that the property you wish to research is in Montgomery County. Start your property detective search by going to the DHCA (Department of Housing and Community Affairs) eProperty Mining Application at apps.montgomerycounty md.gov/dhca-eproperty. [Note: The original URL printed in the newsletter, www.montgomerycountymd.gov/apps/DHCA/pdm_online/pdmfull.asp, is no longer active.] DHCA’s eProperty Mining Application will give you information from seven data sources simply by entering a street name and number. The first data source is the Montgomery County property tax. However, I recommend looking at the property’s actual property tax bill and account information at apps.montgomery countymd.gov/realpropertytax/. [Note: The original URL printed in the newsletter, www.montgomerycountymd.gov/apps/tax/index.asp, is no longer active.] This site will tell you the amount of property taxes and whether any property taxes are owed on the property.

Online sources can tell you about the owners of any Montgomery County home.

The second information category in DHCA’s eProperty Mining Application is the “Maryland Real Property Data Search.” Although the State Department of Assessments and Taxation (SDAT) real property data search results from the eProperty Mining Application should be sufficient for most property detective purposes, there is much more real property information available from the SDAT web site at sdat.dat. maryland.gov/RealProperty/Pages/default.aspx. [Note: The original URL printed in the newsletter, sdatcert3.resiusa.org/rp_rewrite/, is no longer active.] For example, if you want a listing of all of the property owners on a specific street, then just enter the street name (without a house number), such as “Caddington.” Alternatively, if you wish to learn about properties that have sold in the area, select “property sales.” You can search for property sales by date, street, or subdivision. (The subdivision code is a two- or three-digit number, which can be found on your assessment notice or property tax bill; for example, the “Forest Knolls” subdivision code is 102.) Once you enter this information, you then can find the sales price of the property and the new owner’s name and address.

The third category of information under DHCA’s eProperty Mining Application is “permits.” This links you directly to the Montgomery County Department of Environmental Resources (DER) permitting services office, which allows you to search for building, electrical, fence, and other permits by property address.

Fourth, if the property is rental, then you can find out if the property has a rental license and contact information for the holder of the rental license. A rental license is required even of single-family detached home rentals; an exception to the rental license requirement might be if part of the rental property is owner-occupied or is occupied by a relative of the owner.

The last two categories of the DHCA eProperty information probably will not yield many results for single-family owner-occupied homes. This includes “housing code enforcement,” which lists the nature of complaints made against a property and the disposition of the complaint. This housing code enforcement information will apply principally to rental properties.

Finally, the eProperty Data Mining Application also includes information on MPDUs, or “moderately priced dwelling units,” which are affordable housing units required to be included in many new residential developments and redevelopments.

A good property detective won’t stop his or her search at the DHCA’s eProperty Mining Application. There is much more available free information. This includes, but is not limited to, the online Maryland Land Records (www.MdlandRec.Net) and plats.net (for subdivision plats), SDAT business/charter information (www.dat.state. md.us) to search for corporations, limited liability companies, and other entity owners of property; Maryland Judiciary Case Search (casesearch.courts.state.md.us/ casesearch/) to search for court cases (including foreclosures) by or against a property owner. [Note: The original URL printed in the newsletter, casesearch.courts.state. md.us/inquiry/inquiry-index.jsp, is no longer active.] There are also various “people locator” services, including Switchboard [no longer active] and AnyWho.com. Finally, there is “Google,” perhaps the most powerful of all search engines. Google Earth or Zillow, among other websites, also can provide maps and satellite images of properties, as well as estimates of the market values of properties. ■