Hello,
I have been looking into Washington State and contacted several counties and some of them have gotten back to me and said they can only give out the list if I don’t use it for commercial purposes. Has anyone else experienced this? I had one county email the list with no disclosures about not using it for commercial purposes. It seems like it is a state wide law however.
Thanks in advanced!
@sempervirens I had the same issue, although oddly enough, not every county responded the same way. I do believe it’s a statewide thing. I am planning to get an attorney to look at it for me at some point to see what is/isn’t legal.
@sempervirens It looks like I am super late to the party. In WA indeed we are bound by the disclosure and when you look at what qualifies for commercial activity - it’s a lot. I would suggest being clear with yourself on what you would use the data for and if you are augmenting/modifying this data in anyway then I do not believe the statement applies because it is then your own database that you are using for commercial purposes.
In WA state the lists are available online from most counties (Grant county doesn’t have it). I would start with King as more “progressive” county as their data is easily available online and you can download it. However, the online data downloads in King does not have first and last name of the owners… the way to get that is by online look up one on one or other creative solutions. As the result, what you have is your own database that I would say is “yours” and not the county. If you plan to approach people from your database, you can exclude those that are on do not contact list, those that passed away, etc… you can make the data compliant depending on the way you intend to communicate with the audience.
I see other counties are moving in the same direction as King, where via FTP file sharing link you can download Assessors and Tax record data but without first and last name of the owners…
Hope this helps