Wayne puts deeds information on Web
By Matt Shaw
Published in News on September 17, 2004 1:59 PM
When was your house built? How big is it? How big is your lot?
Who owns that vacant land? Is any of it in the flood zone? Is it inside the city limits?
How much did your neighbors pay for their homes and what are the houses worth now?
You can now answer those type of questions by going on line. Wayne County has posted information about more than 60,000 properties on its Web site. The mapping tool is at www.waynegov.com/gis.
Web surfers can look up properties by owners' names, addresses or PIN numbers. They can see maps of the properties, including aerial photo overlays, and find the names of owners, appraised value and most recent sales price, among other information.
All this information has been, and continues to be, available in public terminals in the county Tax Department.
The county has also put public terminals in the geographical information systems (GIS) office. Both departments are on the ground floor of the Wayne County Courthouse Annex, 224 E. Walnut St.
But having this information on the Internet is especially handy for some businessmen.
Arnold Flowers has been pushing for this since he became a county commissioner four years ago. He often has had to drive to the courthouse whenever he was interested in buying land, but now he doesn't need to do so, he said today.
"This is so conducive to doing business," Flowers said. "I'm constantly trying to locate land and property owners. This enables me to not drive anywhere."
It will also ease parking downtown, save wear-and-tear on the courthouse and free up county employees, he said.
It could even benefit economic development, Flowers suggested. A company looking for, say, a 500-acre tract could see what's available.
Some people still may need to go to the courthouse. The system is currently inaccessible on Macintosh computers.