Assignment: Public Records and Open-Source Searches
For this assignment, you will learn to use public records to find information about people and real estate.
Background Material
Requirements
A fundamental challenge with this assignment is to ensure that your work is done ethically. It is imperative to be careful about creating content (such as video presentations and portfolio items) that is based upon public records for a few reasons. First, it is possible that a public record about a person could be wrong in some way. This is particularly important when considering information about criminal convictions. We know that people are wrongly convicted regularly; therefore, it is best to avoid producing materials based on a conviction, in case the person is later exonerated.
Land records are also somewhat challenging. Even if a parcel of land is owned today by someone who is a public official, that person could sell the property to a private individual who is not in the public eye. For this reason, we’re going to focus on commercial properties and those owned by institutions and government agencies for the purposes of this assignment. However, private research on the history of a house and its land is an important step to take whenever you purchase a house. The difference here is one of publication: extra ethical responsibilities apply whenever you plan to re-disseminate a public record, as opposed to researching it for your own use.
Prepare a video presentation that addresses the following:
- Demonstrate how to use the Horry County government website to find information about parcels of property owned by Coastal Carolina University. Does CCU own the entire campus? If not, who is the owner of record for parts of campus?
- Pick 3 parcels of land owned by CCU. As far as the records are available online, find out about the history of the land. Do not name any private owners (natural persons) who owned the parcel before CCU. It is acceptable to name any corporate owners (those with LLC or INC in the name).
- Using publicly available real estate search tools (e.g. Realtor.com or Zillow), find a house, condo, or townhouse that you like that is currently for sale somewhere in Horry County. Since the property is listed publicly, mention the property address, but do not mention the names of any owners. Trace the history of the property, and find out how many times it has previously been sold and at what price.
- For the property you identified in the previous step, determine the coastal evacuation zone in which the property is located (A, B, C, or out of the evacuation area).
- For the property you identified, use the Map Your Move tool to determine if the property is in a FEMA flood zone and if the property flooded after Hurricane Florence. Note that the FEMA flood zones still do not fully account for the flooding that occurred after Florence. A FEMA flood zone of “X” means the property is not in a FEMA flood hazard area. Other flood zone specifiers mean that a mortgage company will require flood insurance on the property – if they will underwrite a mortgage on it in the first place.
If you elect to work with a partner, you should each present for approximately equal time.
Be sure to include the URLs to your portfolio (or both portfolios, if working with a partner) in the presentation.
Portfolio Items
Add the following components to your portfolio:
- A summary of what you learned about the Coastal Carolina University campus when researching land records.
- A list of things to consider about a property when contemplating a purchase, along with a general idea of where to find that information. (This is intentionally not tied to Horry County, since you may end up living in another county or state after graduation. While states and counties differ, and some have more or less information readily available online than others, the search process is mostly the same.)
Submission
Submit your presentation video to one of the weekly submission boxes for the course. If you’re working with a partner, only one person needs to submit the video.
