For example I am right now sitting in an Arby’s. I’m trying to figure out what business was here before Arby’s? Which would’ve been at least 20 years ago.
Is there a website or someplace that I could easily search this information at, preferably for free.
Edit: the arbys building was built when they moved in. I’m curious what business was there before.
City or county property records should be public and have that info.
There are tools out there that analyze public records in a more usable format (ex. shipping records, elected representative financials)
Might be cool to have that for property records for curiosity and analysis, but I guess that might increase abuse?
Yeah, I’m happy for it to be inconvenient. Just this morning I got a spear-phishing email with my full home address and name trying to trick me into canceling a fake auto-renew subscription.
Four almost-foolproof ways come to mind
- Ask the neighbors.
- Search property records.
- Search business license records.
- Search tax records.
Bonus: Ask the local chamber of commerce.
ETA: Search old phone books. Ask the local librarian.
The only building i know you can do that to is the old Pizza Hut buildings, they’re just built different
Ask random old people on the street.
Depends on if the building was leased. You can see ownership records as public information. If Arbies (or their franchise peeps) owned that property and sold it, it would be viewable. If somebody else owned it and leased to Arby’s… that’s going to be a matter of finding the person and asking them- and they may (almost certainly will) tell you to take a flying leap.
You can look up current property owners by searching county property maps as a place to start. every county I know of has very detailed county maps used by surveyors and such like. just google [your county] property map and you should find it.
in any case, at 20 years, I’d assume that building (if not that property) was always an Arby’s.
Recent history would be reflected in Google Street View, but that only goes back to maybe 2011 and only for some parts of the USA.
Going further back, you can try property ownership records, or even just searching for the address online, setting the time window to before the current business came to be.
I’m just jealous your town still has an Arby’s.
2 of them about 2 miles apart
