[rentatrip]

FYI, many of the houses have info which is in error- I looked up the house I lived in (Hawthorne CA) It says it was from the early 50's, however the current home was built in 1993 after the old 50's building was totally demolished, but the info on the data search does not have any specifics about the demolition in 1991, Just be advised , the 1840 house , is probably long gone , where as the title deed for the property goes back as far as 1840, Many of these entries are added by small brained part time real estate hacks without any background in legal documentation and the data is not a final legal binder.
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Originally Posted by Those Who Squirm

Back in August I posted about the City-Data.com website, where you can get the recorded build dates of most buildings and houses, although there are some exceptions.

Using Google, you can query for the year of your choice to see what buildings exist, if any for a given year. For example, if you enter this into the Google search field:

site:city-data.com los angeles property valuation "Year built: 1840"

you will find this house in Santa Monica:



And from the information given:

Year built: 1840
Effective year built: 1950

I suppose it's possible the house was entirely rebuilt in 1950, but even it it was it's still remarkable to think that a house had been standing there previously since 1840. And it doesn't look like a 1950s era house anyway, so I suspect it really might be from 1840. If anything, it looks like an old adobe house that might have once been an outbuilding on the Malibu rancho.

To search for other years, just substitute the year of your choice for 1840. Once we get back to before 1890 or so, each year may reveal only one or two buildings, or none at all. But it's astonishing how far back we can find recorded build dates.