Do-It-Yourself Due Diligence

While Real Estate Agents are helpful during a real estate purchase and sale transaction, when buying real estate – the old saying still holds true: “anything worth doing right, is worth doing yourself.”

That’s why its important to take due diligence into your own hands when making a major purchase – such as real estate. Sure, building inspectors and other third parties are a valuable necessity during the due diligence period, it still doesn’t hurt to do your own snooping when scooping out a prospective property.

One of the best places to begin is the King County Parcel Viewer at http://www5.metrokc.gov/parcelviewer/Viewer/KingCounty/Viewer.asp?App=Parcels&SearchFor=Addstart 

(copy and paste the link in your browser to open the page)

On this site, you can search tax and appraisal records, purchase and sale records, see what permits have been applied for on the property, King County planning and critical areas designation – and even snoop on who your new neighbors could be (using the Identity function).

The amount of information that is readily available is a little scary these days, but as long as its used correctly, it can also be extremely valuable during real estate negotiation process.