you can give me there address and I can look up the tax records for you

It depends on your county and state. Texas is a non-disclosure state and sales prices are not required to be disclosed. In many cases they are but it is not required. If you are asking this in order to determine what to offer on a home for sale please remember that has nothing to do with what the current market is. The market determines value not a previous purchase price.

If you are buying a home in Saint Charles county, you can go to http://www.sccmo.org, select Residents on the left of the page, then select Property Assessment Database. Type in the street name, or partial street name, search and select details from the resulting list. The sales history will be there.

I'm not sure about your county, but Missouri statute does not require disclosure of purchase price. What you may find at the courthouse is how much the mortgage is, but that is not the same as the sales price. Without knowing the terms of the loan (20% down, etc), that figure only represents the amount of the lien.

I guess that some MLS systems require disclosure of the actual purchase price, but I see $1 recorded in MLS frequently as a sales price.

If it was bought through a Realtor, the MLS will be updated within a few days and your Realtor will be able to check it for you. If it was bought from an individual or a builder, it may take a bit longer, but it will eventually be recorded in the county records and can be accessed there. Some counties are prompt (like St Louis County), some like St Louis City, aren't. If you are talking about a home that was bought a long time ago, it depends on how long ago it was purchased. If it was a very long time ago, the tax records will be scanty and not show a lot of information. ie, an original owner from 30-40 years ago will not have a lot of information in the tax records on when they purchased their home or what they originally paid for it. Email me if you would like me to look one up for you in St Louis county if you don't have a Reatlor that you are working with.

You need your own realtor! Ask a question, they will send you the answer, chart what ever you need. Realtors do it all for you! You just sit back and ask and we do all the work, that's our job. We have all the info at our fingertips just for you!
Rob Benson
Prudential Select Properties - The Rock!
Direct (636) 373-4381
Fax (636) 720-3011
buy1realestate@aol.com http://www.robertwbenson.com

The tax records are updated differently in different counties. St Louis County and St Charles County typically get the records updated within a month of the closing and you can check on line. Jefferson County really doesn't have easy to find info on it's website for the community to check. St Louis City takes a long time to update their records.

A Realtor will be able to help you quickly IF the property was sold through the MLS system, if not, then they will have access to some tax records that you also have access to, but they can still typically find it sooner since they know what they are looking for. Note that the Realtors don't have the selling price until AFTER the home actually closes unless they were a part of the transaction and even then they legally can' give it out until after closing, since if the home doesn't close they have put the seller at an unfair advantage with a second contract on the home if they tell the public what he accepted with the first contract.

Let me know if you'd like help with finding out what something sold for.

This is the third similar quesiton we have today on this - how to find out what the owner paid for, ..etc.

Same answer -

You can go to the county and find that information on the Tax record; or your realtor will be able to tell you. If you post the address here, we might be able to help you.

or Zillow works too. it shows when the house was bought and how much it was - Go to the Zesimates and Charts, it will show you the last sold price (the owner's purchase price)

However, to save another question - don't go with their estimate, it's not accurate yet (another toopic) - you definitely need to talk to a Realtor for an accurate comp.

A side comment - what the seller paid for the house has very little to do with the market price of the house.

Sylvia