My house price is on the internet
July 22, 2012 8:47 AM Subscribe
When you google my address, a listing on guava.ca appears with its list price from last fall. How can I get this completely removed from the internet?
I googled the first address on the site you link to, and also googled up "Toronto CA real estate" and it appears that real estate listings - including what's sold for how much - are just as public in Canada as they are in the U.S. So the owner of guava.ca might be willing to take yours down, but it's going to appear on umpteen other real estate sites (like this one) where that's not going to be the case. It's public info that's on file with the municipality or provincial (tax?) authorities.
posted by rtha at 9:05 AM on July 22, 2012 [1 favorite]
posted by rtha at 9:05 AM on July 22, 2012 [1 favorite]
Real estate listings are a matter of public record. If you list and the place doesn't sell, your strategy is going to be apparent to any prospective buyers.
Trying to fight the market is usually a waste of time.
posted by rhombus at 9:05 AM on July 22, 2012
Trying to fight the market is usually a waste of time.
posted by rhombus at 9:05 AM on July 22, 2012
How can I get this completely removed from the internet?
You can't. Likely to prevent whatever sketchy thing you're trying to do by covering up how much your home was worth when you bought it.
posted by toomuchpete at 10:56 AM on July 22, 2012 [6 favorites]
You can't. Likely to prevent whatever sketchy thing you're trying to do by covering up how much your home was worth when you bought it.
posted by toomuchpete at 10:56 AM on July 22, 2012 [6 favorites]
and if they're decent people they will agree.
Whether they agree or decline is not an arbitor of whether these are decent people or not. House sales are a matter of public record. Commitment to an accurate and detailed reporting of that record may indeed indicate a higher degree of decency.
posted by DarlingBri at 11:00 AM on July 22, 2012 [2 favorites]
Whether they agree or decline is not an arbitor of whether these are decent people or not. House sales are a matter of public record. Commitment to an accurate and detailed reporting of that record may indeed indicate a higher degree of decency.
posted by DarlingBri at 11:00 AM on July 22, 2012 [2 favorites]
It might not be sketchy. That's not quite fair. I can easily see someone wanting to prevent coworkers or family members from looking up how much you paid for your house to avoid a bunch of unpleasantness.
The fact that they don't want everyone knowing how much they paid doesn't mean they're working a ruse.
posted by winna at 11:32 AM on July 22, 2012 [3 favorites]
The fact that they don't want everyone knowing how much they paid doesn't mean they're working a ruse.
posted by winna at 11:32 AM on July 22, 2012 [3 favorites]
It may not be sketchy, but just an example of how much public information is now *really* public because it's available on the internet. How much you paid for your house. How much you pay in property taxes (here in California that can be a touchy subject, hoo boy!) If you are a public employee, your actual salary. If you are a senior executive of a publicly traded company, there are oceans of information about your finances and your trades of company stock available on the SEC website. And so on.
Welcome to the information age.
posted by ambrosia at 12:08 PM on July 22, 2012
Welcome to the information age.
posted by ambrosia at 12:08 PM on July 22, 2012
No, all that is true, but I was responding to the implication that the only reason someone wouldn't want that information public was a nefarious one, outside of the fact that it IS public record.
As someone who will never, ever have enough money to buy a house, I can imagine not wanting everyone who has my address knowing how much I paid for it, although that desire is at variance with the facts of public record and all those public records being on the internet.
posted by winna at 12:20 PM on July 22, 2012 [3 favorites]
As someone who will never, ever have enough money to buy a house, I can imagine not wanting everyone who has my address knowing how much I paid for it, although that desire is at variance with the facts of public record and all those public records being on the internet.
posted by winna at 12:20 PM on July 22, 2012 [3 favorites]
Sorry if I wasn't clear- my comment was directed more at toomuchpete's assertion that the OP was trying to do something sketchy. It sounds like OP may not have previously understood just how much information is out there on the series of tubes.
posted by ambrosia at 12:25 PM on July 22, 2012 [1 favorite]
posted by ambrosia at 12:25 PM on July 22, 2012 [1 favorite]
I am not Canadian, and it is possible that there are differences between Canada and the US in this respect, so take this with a grain of salt, but here goes:
There's a big difference between a real estate listing, and the purchase record of the house. The former is the ad used to sell the house while on the market; listing information is copyright-able and tightly controlled by real estate agents, at least in the US and Canada. The latter is, as everyone has been saying, a matter of public record.
So: if what comes up when you google is a satellite photo of the property, a la google maps, plus info about sales price and property taxes, then you're probably SOL. That's just a compendium of public info.
If however, what you're seeing is interior shots of the house, colorful descriptions of the property plus info about the asking price and/or the agent's contact info, that stuff should be pull-able. Get in touch with the listing agent and/or brokerage who sold you the house. Depending on how the website got the listing, they should be able to get it pulled or to escalate it to people who can get it pulled....
Unless the website is super-shady. Some of the sites that reproduce listing info are in fact super-shady, and if this guava is a non-repurable site that doesn't care about burning its bridges, they may not respond. In which case you're SOL again.
posted by Diablevert at 4:01 PM on July 22, 2012 [1 favorite]
There's a big difference between a real estate listing, and the purchase record of the house. The former is the ad used to sell the house while on the market; listing information is copyright-able and tightly controlled by real estate agents, at least in the US and Canada. The latter is, as everyone has been saying, a matter of public record.
So: if what comes up when you google is a satellite photo of the property, a la google maps, plus info about sales price and property taxes, then you're probably SOL. That's just a compendium of public info.
If however, what you're seeing is interior shots of the house, colorful descriptions of the property plus info about the asking price and/or the agent's contact info, that stuff should be pull-able. Get in touch with the listing agent and/or brokerage who sold you the house. Depending on how the website got the listing, they should be able to get it pulled or to escalate it to people who can get it pulled....
Unless the website is super-shady. Some of the sites that reproduce listing info are in fact super-shady, and if this guava is a non-repurable site that doesn't care about burning its bridges, they may not respond. In which case you're SOL again.
posted by Diablevert at 4:01 PM on July 22, 2012 [1 favorite]
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by decathecting at 8:52 AM on July 22, 2012