Did your neighbor pay his property taxes?

[powayseller]

Here’s how to tell if your neighbor is late on property taxes.

Go to this San Diego County Assessor website, and enter the name of the street and zip code.

You’ll get a list of all parcels on that street, with name, taxes, date paid. If they are late, it shows PAYMENT DUE.

One of my neighbors is late. She is a friend. I hope she is not in trouble financially.

[lostkitty]

Oh my…. This site is fun, in a sick kind of way…

Maybe this one posting accounts for how quiet it is on piggington today… everyone off looking up their friends and neighbors tax bill?

[CardiffBaseball]

Hrmm, link not working for me. I wonder if someone discovered something not supposed to be public?

[Bugs]

And to think there are a lot of Americans who think our government is being invasive when they ask the phone companies for lists of phone calls made for the (alleged) purpose of chasing terrorists. Now the average joe can look right into his neighors’ personal lives to see if they’re doing what he thinks they should be doing.

[Carlsbadliving]

The entire County website is down. Have to check back later I guess. I’m curious to see how my neighbors are doing these days.

[lostkitty]

It is working again now.

[lendingbubblecontinues]

Let’s keep this one going….before I go out to see any house, I want to know how far (if at all) the owner is on taxes.

Look up your street name…I found some very interesting stuff out with this site.

Thanks PS.

[nla]

Does anybody know how often they update this site? I checked my street and my next door neighbor who just bought his house last year has overdue taxes between 2 properties amounting to about $11,000. He’s a mortgage loan broker of some sort. I hope he’s doing OK financially. He bought his house for almost a million.

-peace

[rankandfile]

Bugs, I agree with you on a certain level about the privacy factor, but I think that certain things being made public are justified. I am partial to making home pricing/purchasing information more public. I don’t like the dark clouds around home pricing activities that obfuscate the setting of prices. I think this is part of the reason for the rapid price markup we’ve seen in the past 5 years. If you complain about this, you must also complain about the publicly available information concerning home improvements, which to me are more invasive. You basically have to tell the city (and the public) every little thing that you want to do to your house, even if it doesn’t affect them.

[powayseller]

rankandfile – you also have to publish your intent to file for bankruptcy. That is invasive too.

I see Bugs and sdr’s views, because their professions require the safeguarding of this info. But we don’t have that same oath. We can print the address, but not the name. We don’t want to cause more humiliation to certain individuals. We can make a point without printing the name.

peace – updated daily? I checked a neighbor who was overdue last week, and this week it shows she has paid.

[sdrealtor]

Rankandfile
Why dont we just make salary information public also? It would help erase inequities between sexes and races in earnings. I think the privacy of salaries has led to massive inequities and nepotism.

[Bugs]

To address your points:

The local governments have building codes to enforce that are intended to develop and maintain health and safety issues as well as other aspects of construction that have an impact on the community. If you think building codes are too restrictive you might go take a look at unregulated areas, like some of the neighborhoods in Tijuana, and see what happens when the comunities don’t enforce standards.

There’s a distinct difference between looking up a sale of a neighboring property to use that information to make a decision or perform an analysis, and looking over our neighbor’s fence to watch them sunbathing in the nude for our personal gratification. Although our society apparently revels in invading the privacy of celebrities and seeing photos of their cellulite and bulging bellies in the tabloids, most civil people will draw the line at openly scrutinizing the contents of the shopper’s basket while standing in line with them at the supermarket. A Japanese family of 4 can live in a 400 SqFt apartment by scrupulously observing personal boundaries. Obviously, we all have our boundaries.

Here’s a rhetorical question: would you approach your neighbor and ask the same question that you’re trying to answer off this database? In the case of sales prices or property attributes, maybe so – I do it all the time when I’m working. In the case of paying their taxes, probably not. If you wouldn’t feel comfortable doing it to their face then how much more socially acceptable should it be when you’re doing it behind their back?

All of this ties back to the purpose of gathering and using the information. If you’re using the information constructively then that’s one thing, if you’re using the information for entertainment purposes then that’s something else.

Just my opinion. Other people can and do disagree.

[powayseller]

I agree in protecting people’s privacy. I do snoop on realtytrac and the assessor database to gauge the market. When I post this stuff, I don’t use the indivdual’s names. I’ve written about Poway homes bought in the 1980’s, where they refied out the equity and are now in foreclosure, and that one neighbor is late on taxes. It was not necessary to give the names of those families to make the points I was making. Once, I posted the address and name, so people could see if someone they actually knew was in foreclosure, and I was told this was a bad idea, and I can see that now.

So we have to learn how we can make a point about the market turning without humiliating. Remember the book The Scarlet Letter? In Hawthorne’s book, adulteresses had to wear a sewn-on scarlet large letter (Capital A?) on their clothes, so everybody would know they committed adultery. Nobody should have to wear a scarlet letter.

[Peace]

the records don’t tell the whole story: it appears that the status of the property taxes are not necessairly listed on the street where the property’s located.
For example – my stepfather’s property tax status on a rental he has in Encinitas is listed for his street of residence (mailing address) in Carlsbad.
So if landlord/investor/speculator/flipper owns a house on your street and doesn’t have their tax bill delivered to that house, the tax status is not listed on that street in the tax records it’s listed on the street where the tax bill is sent.

[powayseller]

If your mailing address differs from the physical address, you are listed in a separate category titled Unsecured, but on the mailing address street.

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