Modern-day Gladys Kravitz solves a mystery

Published July 30, 2007

The house down the street looked empty.
I passed it every day on my way home. It always had three or four or more cars in the driveway. Now there was none.
"I wonder if that house got foreclosed on," I said to my husband a couple weeks ago.
I kept meaning to get the house number so I could look it up.
There are a lot of Web sites that list foreclosures, but alas, most of them give only the most basic information - such as the street name - before you have to sign up and pay to get the rest.
One site offered a seven-day free trial.
Shoot, I thought, I only need it for seven minutes. I'll sign up. I had to provide credit card information, which I had no qualms about being the avid online shopper that I am.
And then I read the fine print: If you do not cancel within the seven days, your card automatically will be billed for the following month: $49.95.
I closed out that Web site fast.
I don't know about you but I always, always, always forget to cancel subscriptions that have that caveat after a free come-on.
Anyway, what piqued my interest about the house down the street was that last week after I noticed all the cars gone, I noticed the pool gone. An above-ground pool that had been visible from the street had vanished, perhaps having been drained and folded up and carried off into the night.
"It has to be a foreclosure," my husband said. "Did you check the auditor's Web site?"
The Lorain County Auditor. That's the ticket.
So I went looking.
I tried to figure out the house's house number. It is five houses down, add 10 to my house number and I should have it, right?
No, that would be too easy. My house number plus 10 brought up the next door neighbor's property.
Puzzled again. I ended up - the auditor's site allows this - putting in a range of numbers and looking at all the houses in the range.
I was typing and clicking and studying the computer screen for hours when my husband said, "Hey, Gladys Kravitz, what are you doing?"
For those of you who don't remember - or, gulp, are too young to remember - Gladys Kravitz was the nosy neighbor always threatening to expose Samantha's magical powers on "Bewitched."
"Actually," he said, "you're the modern-day Gladys."
It was true. Gone are the days when neighbor had to spy on neighbor over the back fence or between the slits in the drapes.
Now, with enough time and ingenuity, anyone can get information on just about anyone by using the Internet. It's kind of scary.
I found out the names of the people living on my short street. I found out, in many cases, what they had paid for their house and when they bought it.
I found out how many square feet each house has and how many bedrooms and baths. I compared our square footage with the other houses on the street. I was lost in my research.
And then I remembered what I was looking for.
Did the house down the street get foreclosed on?
I figured out what house number it was and clicked on the address for property information.
Sure enough. The words "sheriff sale" came up on one of the categories on the page.
Hmm. Wonder what the people who lived there did for a living? Wonder how they lost their house? Did something bad happen?
OK, so, I guess the Internet can't tell a person everything about her neighbors.
Maybe Gladys Kravitz was onto something with those binoculars of hers.

(By the way, you have to pay to look on the auditor's Web site, too, but it is a fraction of the cost of the others.)