from Playborhood Palo Alto / Menlo Park

Guerilla Playborhood Hunting Techniques III: Research Neighbors Online

Posted: 04/24/08 03:55 PM

[NOTE:  This the third in a series of four articles on Guerilla Playborhood Hunting Techniques.  The first article is an introduction to the topic, the second is about researching neighborhood reputations, and the fourth discusses what to look for and do when visiting a neighborhood around a home for sale.]

Because driving to a house for sale and nosing around there takes a lot of time, I search publicly available online information on close neighbors first to get some indication of whether kids my kids’ ages might be living there.  After all, from kids’ point of view, preschoolers in particular, next-door neighbors are by far the most important, so if I can find that at least one kid my kids’ ages lives next-door, that makes it likely that I’ll spend the time to visit the house and neighborhood to get more information.

Be forewarned: the methods I describe here seem invasive, but I’m only searching for publicly available information, and I’m doing it for a noble cause - to find neighborhood playmates for my kids.

So here’s what I do:

Continued on Playborhood Palo Alto / Menlo Park…

by Mike Lanza

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