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Three years ago, Matthew Haines was remodeling a five-family brownstone he bought in Harlem when inspiration hit him. "There were all these abandoned buildings that were holding down my rent roll," he recalled saying to himself. "What can I do to make other homeowners comfortable buying here?"

What they needed, he decided, was the ability to research a property--to see its recent sale prices, the prices of other properties in a neighborhood and even a glimpse of its potential problems. Buyers could obtain that data, but it would take days, trotting from one government office to another. "Some of the information is so arcane that you might as well not use it," Haines said in a telephone interview.

His solution was PropertyShark.com, a Web site he founded that details New York real estate like no other. Here in one spot are layers of data from public records. "We saw our site as an opportunity to level the playing field," said Haines, a software developer.
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Read More / Source: News.com