Have you moved into a new neighborhood and wondered, “Who lives by me?” How do you find out who lives at a certain address? This article explains the process in the following convenient steps:
- Introduction to How to Find Out Who Lives at a Certain Address
- Why You Want to Ask “Who Lives By Me?”
- Reverse Address Lookup, Residential
- Property Assessor Records
- The Simplest Free Way to Accomplish You Goal
- Once You’ve Exhausted the Free Resources …
- How to Find Someone’s Past Addresses
- Search Tools
- Public Records
- Private Detectives
- Finding Your Own Past Addresses
- Running a Credit Check
Wondering how to find out who lives at a certain address? No matter the reason, from time to time it becomes important to know “who lives next door” or find out who lives in a specific house or apartment.
Why You Want to Ask, “Who Lives By Me?”
When you move into a new neighborhood, it’s a good idea to meet your neighbors and begin building trust with them. But if you’re not sure of who or what kind of people live by you, then doing a little homework in advance is not a bad idea.
If you have children you naturally want to know your neighbors are people who have clean records. If you have valuables in your household you also want to know your neighbors don’t have a recent string of burglary convictions. That example may be a little extreme, but you get the idea.
If you have lived in your neighborhood for any length of time but changeover in home ownership and rentals means you no longer know all your neighbors, now might be the best time for you to ask yourself, “Who lives by me?” It’s helpful to understand who is moving into your neighborhood as much as it is to know whose neighborhood you are joining.
The good news is that you may not have to spend a dime for this information. Follow these steps to find out what you need to know:
Reverse Address Lookup, Residential
A reverse address lookup should be your first step when trying to find out who lives at a specific address. The image below is taken from People Finders. Unfortunately, their service won’t always give you the best results. Also, they have moved the address search from main navigation but it was still showing in the page footer the last time I checked for it.
Go ahead and test this reverse address search engine by putting in your own address. If you’re like me, you’re wondering who the hell all these people are and why none of them are you. Most likely, this system just looks through old address records found in phone books or something and mashes them together in a huge list.
One odd thing I noticed about this tool, too, is that when it does return the correct name for an address, it formalizes the first name. For example, my dad’s first name is Billy, but the tool returns his name was “William”. But his name isn’t William; it literally is Billy. Another example is my name, Randy. The tool returns the name “Randolph” instead of “Randy”. I have no idea what that’s all about.
As a first step, a reverse address lookupis a good tool. Other sources for reverse address searchesinclude:
- WhitePages.Com
- ReversePhoneDirectory.com
- 411.com
Use Property Assessor Records to Find Out Who Lives at a Certain Address
If that doesn’t work, and it might not, your next step should be to look at property assessor records. As soon as you’ve exhausted the simple (and free) reverse address lookup, you’re going to have to either do some foot work or put down a little bit of money to get the info you need. If you’re lucky, the county in which you’re looking for these records has them available online.
Do a simple Google or Bing search for the terms “Jefferson County property assessor records”, inserting the specific county you’re looking for in place of “Jefferson”. These searches are almost always free, but they may give you the name of the person who OWNS the property as opposed to the person nowliving there.
If it’s a rental property or a home owned by the bank, you may still not find the information you need. If your county’s records are not online, you can call the county to request the information. You might or might not have to go there in person tomake a formal request for the information. These days you can usually get that information over the phone.
The person you should ask for is the “Country Recorder of Deeds”.
The Simplest Free Way toFind Out Who Lives at a Certain Address
Of course, the easiest way to get this information for free is to just knock on the person’s door and ask them who they are. This might work well if your goal is to offer to buy the property, for example.
On the other hand, if you have other reasons for requesting this information, you might not want to go this route, even though it’s free. One option in that case might be to knock on one of the neighbors’ doors and ask them if they know who lives there.
Some people are shy, too. Knocking on someone’s door to ask who lives in their house might be overwhelming to that type of person. (I have friends like this.)
If shyness is the problem, you could just ask one of your gregarious, extroverted friends to knock on the door for you and ask on your behalf.
Depending on the address in question, this might not be the safest option. Some neighborhoods are just plain rougher than others. That’s not just true in urban areas, either. I know rural people in Texas and Oklahoma who are just waiting for an opportunity to put their shotgun to good use on a stranger.
In fact, let me clarify something:
If you knock on someone’s door to ask who lives at an address, I’m not responsible for the outcome, and neither is this Website. Any actions you take based on ANYTHING you read online is your responsibility alone. These tips are provided as-is, without warranty, and they don’t claim to be advice of any kind. This post is for entertainment and educational purposes only.
Once You’ve Exhausted the Free Resources, Be Prepared to Pay
If property assessor records don’t fulfill your needs, you may have to start taking drastic steps — like spending money. Online services likePeopleFinders.com allow you to search using all sorts of filters, including address lookups, for as little as $20 and up. You can also use this service to find marriage and divorce records, or even criminal history.
If you don’t want to pay an online service, you mighthave to avail yourself of the services of a private investigator. That’s right — a gumshoe, a dick, a “private eye”. Yes, these people really do exist, though their jobs may not be as glamorous as they are shown in the movies. Search your local yellow pages for private investigator services, or look here for a massive index of “gumshoe” services in your area.
You may not have to pay money to find out who lives at a certain address. It may be as easy as running a free online search. Depending on how important the information is to you, you may be looking at spending hundreds of dollars on “private eye” services, but you should start with a simple reverse address search.
How to Find Someone’s Past Addresses
Looking for info on how to find someone’s past address or past addresses?
You canget this information in many ways, all of them legal.Some of them are free, but others areexpensive.
Hereare various ways of finding a person’s past address or addresses:
Search Tools
Start your search at ZabaSearch.com. This is the easiest and (in my opinion) the most accurate way to find people that is completely free. I’ve been able to find people that I only remember the last name of, or some of the digits of their telephone number (even some cell phones) using a simple Zaba search.
Anothergreat search tool to perform the same task isPublic People Finder.
Public Records
Search public records. This is a legal and free way to look for information about a person’s past addresses, and is the first step that an expensive private investigator service would take to get the info you need. In many cases, the county in which you’re looking may have free public records online, meaning you don’t even have to get up off the couch to find what you need.
Private Detectives
Look into hiring a private detective. Websites like PINow.comcan help you find local private investigators. If you go this route, you’ll have to spend a good deal of money, but depending on how difficult to find the information is and how badly you want it, this may be the only way for you to find someone’s past address or past addresses.
Finding Your Own Past Addresses
You might need to find your own past addresses. Here are some of the reasons you might need to do that:
- Tax purposes
- Job applications
- College applications
- Credit information
Running a Credit Check
If you’re trying to find out your own past addresses, you can run a credit check on yourself for that information. Remember that everyone in the country is entitled to one free credit check per year per credit agency — in reality that’s three free credit checks per year. Run a credit check through a responsible organization like Experian.com or by contacting one of the other credit bureaus directly, as there are plenty of scam credit check sites on the Internet.
If you still can’t find the information you need, you may not be out of luck yet. Search the Internet, ask private detectives for help, talk to a friend who is a cop . . . do something else. There’s plenty of material on backgroundrecordsblog.com and other websites for you to dig through. Don’t ever give up hope. Remember, this is America — everything is public record.
Figure out which tactics workfor you, and let meknow how your search turned out, or if you’ve found a way to pull this off that we haven’t thought of.
