What you can ask
Anything about property in the markets we cover, in your own words, at any scale:
- One address. “What should I know about 1234 Main St before making an offer?”
- A street or a neighborhood. “Which parts of Brooklyn have the most code violations per home this year?” Areas can be picked by who lives there or what the housing is: the densest, the lowest-income, the oldest homes.
- A whole market. “Where in Miami are roof permits up the most compared with last year?”
- Two markets side by side. “How does building activity in Minneapolis compare with Cincinnati this year?” Comparisons are stated per 1,000 residents, or per 1,000 homes for housing questions, beside the counts.
- Things that happen in sequence. “How many condemned properties got a demolition permit within a year?” or “Which homes that sold last year have pulled a permit since?”
Start a thread from Ask, the first item in the left nav and the page you land on when you sign in.
How a thread works
Each question and its answer stay in order in a thread, so you can sharpen what you asked without starting over: “only the ones over $250,000”, “now by neighborhood”, “same thing for last year”. Nothing earlier is rewritten; a correction is a new question below.
A thread is titled for you from what it turns out to be about. Your recent threads are listed in the left nav, and All threads lists every one by day. Threads are private to you; a teammate cannot see yours.
While an answer is being worked out, a line says what is being looked at. Stop ends the work. Start a new thread for a new subject.
Ask about this
On a record’s page, a property’s page, or a monitor’s page, Ask about this starts a thread that already knows what you mean, so “what happened here after it sold?” needs no address.
A property’s full history is part of an activation (see activating a property). Asking about one your organization has not activated, the answer uses what is free and offers to activate it.
What an answer tells you
- What it counted, and over which dates. When you give no dates, a sensible recent window is chosen and named.
- How far the records reach. Each city publishes on its own schedule, so an answer says when a kind of record currently runs through (“sale records here run through August 11”) rather than reporting the weeks after it as quiet.
- What it leaves out. A median time to close a case counts closed cases, and the answer says how many are still open.
- Covered, or nothing on record. “That is not covered here” and “nothing appears in the available records” are different answers, and they are kept apart.
Answers come from the public records available in each market, a best effort that is never guaranteed complete. Areas are described by their streets, ZIP code, and city.
When it asks you first
An answer can offer a next step, such as opening a property’s full history (which uses one of your organization’s monthly activations) or setting up a monitor for what you just found. Either one appears as a card with Approve and Decline, and nothing happens until you approve. A card that is not answered expires after five minutes.
Limits
- Asking is included on every plan and does not count against anything, under a fair-use limit that ordinary use does not reach.
- Each plan sets how many of your questions can be worked on at once. Ask more than that and the extra waits its turn rather than being refused.
- It cannot yet rank or follow a contractor, an owner, or a company across records, share a thread, or export an answer.
- It answers about the markets we cover. A place outside them is reported as not covered.