The Philadelphia Department of Records has created a new website, Philly LandStat, for Philly residents’ collective infotainment. Though it might seem dull, even borderline tedious, the fun side of Philly Landstat begins to reveal itself once you realize that you can use it to generate informative reports and maps about property use city-wide, leading to the feeling that you’re discovering some juicy gossip on your neighbors. The site gives information organized by year in five categories: Condominiums, deeds, mortgages, property type, and real estate transfer tax. The most interesting are probably the condos and property type. Of course, the new condos are all exactly where you’d expect, but did you know that there is one and only one vacant land parcel at the Naval Yard? Don’t go getting any ideas! We called it first. With a quaint bungalow, an English garden, and some strategically placed IKEA tchotchkes, we could have ourselves a top-notch residence in no time.

To generate reports of your own, just go to www.phillylandstat.com, either create a new account or proceed anonymously (totally recommended, obvs.), click “generate report,” enter the address of the area you would like to research, click “single area report,” and choose the zip code from the drop-down menu under “select a geography.” Then, it will ask you to name your report, and finally you can click “generate report.”   If you feel like generating a map instead of a report, after you log in at the beginning, click “mapping and analysis” instead of “generate report.” From the drop-down menu, choose “all zip code,” choose the category you wish to map from the drop-down menu, click which of the results you want, choose the year, click the “add” button below, name the project, click “save,” and click “map.” Let us know all the interesting things you find in the comments.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 10th, 2009 at 1:36 pm.