True Building Age?

[mw4man]

hello...

(not certain where this post should go...placed it here...Mr. Administrator, please feel free to move it if need be)

Having a very difficult time determining real/true building age for commercial buildings (& even some residential).  LoopNet has become just the pits.  NJTaxRecords never gives the year.  NJParcels is a bust.  RealtyTrac is OK sometimes.  Then there's the individual County property records search dialogs...most times they return a request to read: "no records found".  I'm at a brick wall...the industry I'm in (Loss Control/Commercial Insurance Inspections) always requires this info...on every damn report (just like they do for 'other tenants in a commercial building'...like we don't have enough to do w/ all the typical info required & we have all this extra time to just run around a building & grab names off doors and such).

Anyway...does anyone know a reliable free (or cheap) source for this information...???...sure would appreciate it if you do.

thanx,

 

mark4man

[Marc]

In my area, it's a bag of tricks, no reliable method that I know of.  I check appliance labels, serial number decoders, MEP materials, toilet tank lids for manufacture dates, etc.

Edited March 28, 2018 by Marc

[Trent Tarter]

I just google the address and go by what pulls up first. Usually it's Zillow, Trulia, or the real estate listing. I state the age source in report. 

[Tom Raymond]

Real estate listings are horribly inaccurate. In my area, most buildings before 1880 are listed as built in 1900.

[Les]

Just my opinion, but relying on any  zillow type site for ages is a slippery slope.  with a bit of knowledge you use site condition and all that Marc states above.  Once in a while I will use public records for commercial.  This not to say you should not use zillow sites, just that you should not rely upon them. 

 

[Jim Baird]

I have met realtors on site that would not even discuss something as on-site measurable as square footage because they considered the subject to be too litigious.

The older a building is the more likely it will have been added to at different times.  In Italy a building I entered to see an art show was built in 1430 something and remodeled in 1640.