Need to know what you paid in real estate taxes last year?  Interested in seeing an aerial view of your neighbor's home, complete with property lines?  This information and more is just a click away at some great local websites.

For Orange County residents, http://gis.co.orange.nc.us/land/search.asp provides a wealth of information.  Here you can retrieve your home's tax value and/or property taxes paid, bring up an aerial map of your community complete with streets and lot lines, even follow the trail of previous owners.  This also can be a great website if you're considering a property for purchase:  the site includes a sketch of each house with estimated square footage, and the GIS section allows you to measure distances.  This feature is great for calculating road frontage, the depth of your lot, or the distance from your future home to your neighbor's.

In Chatham County, visit www.chathamgis.com/ for GIS information.  Here, not only can you view the plat of your home or neighborhood, but the property lines are measured for you.  You can also pull up a property card from the GIS site, with details on acreage, sales price, even your assigned fire district.  And at http://www.chathamnc.org/, the county provides web access to deeds, plats and covenants.  Here you can retrieve printable images of recorded documents for any property in the county.

Live in Durham?  Visit http://rodweb.co.durham.nc.us/  to access recorded deeds and maps.  And if you're in search of GIS information, check out http://gisweb2.ci.durham.nc.us/sdx/imap_launch.html .   A new application, called "Go Maps", allows users to print in PDF form, select aerial views, and measure distance and area.  The website also includes links to an array of other mapping programs.  These include a Durham Street atlas, a county parks locater, and flood insurance rate maps.  This extensive resource also includes a Durham zoning atlas and voter precinct atlas, school attendance zone maps, and a Durham crime mapper. 

Town websites are also worth a visit for information on zoning, long term development plans, pending building applications, and more.  Visit the planning and economic development sections of  http://www.townofchapelhill.org/, http://www.townofcarrboro.org/, www.ci.hillsborough.nc.us/,  and http://www.durhamnc.gov/.  At Carrboro's site, you can view maps of town bike-paths, read the town's vision for the downtown area, and learn about the new Winmore development.  In Hillsborough, the site details a number of large new commercial and residential projects and provides details on historic preservation.  All have a wealth of information about long-term planning, zoning issues, and the application process for development or restoration.

Also be sure to check out the state's new website for flood plain information.  At http://www.ncfloodmaps.com/, you can view and print digital flood maps, research recent changes in flood plain zoning, and peruse the flood map archives.  The "Data Viewer" tool on the site also provides information about flood insurance rates for different locations, based on the flood plain designation.  This site is particularly important in 2007-2008, as flood plain designations for our area were recently revised by the federal government, and your community may have experienced changes in flood zoning.

The above highlight some of the many local websites with extensive information important to homeownership.  As you can see, there's a wealth of on-line property information at your fingertips.  Happy surfing, and until next time, here's to your house!

Written by Wendy Tanson, originally published in Southern Neighbor magazine