Eviction Records

[Jason V.]

Like a lot of people, I heard on a BP podcast that looking into completed evictions is a good way to find landlords in your area who may be motivated to sell their headache properties. 

So I hopped on the interwebs, found my County Clerk website (Wayne Couny, NY - not too far from Rochester, NY) found their electronic database, and had so much trouble navigating it that I just emailed the county clerk for help in finding records of evictions. The not very cordial, but helpful gentleman told me "Evictions are handled at the town court level. You would need to contact each individual town court." 

So my next email was to my town court clerk, who, after questioning why I was interested in eviction proceedings, told me "I do not keep any landlord information. You may be able to find a Landlord association if you google it but I am not sure." 

Ah, the joys of bureaucracy. 

Am I not using the correct words/terms to get what I'm looking for? Anyone else from Western NY, or Rochester in particular have any advice for looking up these types of records? I know things vary from state to state. 

I'm happy to show up in person, but I'm not sure what to say. Apparently our village court doesn't keep any records of eviction proceedings? Is that even possible? Should I be looking at the town instead? 

Sheesh, that guru course I bought made it sound so easy.......

[Mark W.]

@Jason V. Google "ny ecourts".  Should be the first link.  Go through WebCivil Local.  From there you can select the type of search.  I mostly used the Party Search in order to complete my tenant background checks, but there are other searches available.  Play around with it.  All cities/towns court calendars should be in there.

For Rochester City court, it used to be you could search the complete landlord/tenant court history.  Now I believe it is only limited to active or recent cases.  Still useful from my perspective as a landlord, as I can determine if someone is being freshly evicted.