Buyer Be Aware
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Looking up an address? You probably don't want Spokeo.

Spokeo finds people. You need a property report.

If you typed an address into Spokeo because you're thinking about buying a house there, the results aren't answering your question. Spokeo returns names and phone numbers of past residents. What you actually want is whether the house itself is in a flood zone, has open permits, is insurable, or sits next to an EPA cleanup site. That's a different product.

People-search tool

Spokeo / BeenVerified

$3.95-$14.95 / month, auto-renew

  • Returns names, ages, and phone numbers of people who have lived at the address. That's people-search, not property due diligence.
  • Subscription model ($3.95-$14.95/month with auto-renew). You're billed every month even if you only needed one lookup.
  • Doesn't tell you the FEMA flood zone, open permits, code violations, environmental risk, or insurability of the address.
  • Sells the same database of person-data to recruiters, debt collectors, and people-search resellers. Different intent, same product.

Property report

Buyer Be Aware

$19.99-$59.99, one address, no subscription

  • Place-keyed by design. We report on the address (flood zone, permits, environment, school district, insurability), not the people on it.
  • One-time purchase, $19.99 to $59.99. No subscription, no auto-renew.
  • 27+ checks from FEMA, EPA, county recorders, DEA register, Census, and state regulators. Every claim links back to its source.
  • Buyer-paid. No referral fees, no seller incentives, no relationship to any listing agent or insurer.

The legal piece nobody talks about

The Fair Credit Reporting Act regulates how named-person data can be used. Spokeo and BeenVerified have both been sued for violations (Spokeo paid $800K to the FTC in 2012, BeenVerified paid $3.5M in a class-action in 2024). It's a real risk if someone uses a people-search report to make a housing, employment, or credit decision.

Buyer Be Aware is structured as a place-keyed property report. We explicitly do not sell named-person profiles for screening, and the attestation you sign at checkout ties your use to personal property research. It's a cleaner legal posture for what you're actually trying to do.

What overlaps, what doesn't

The one area of genuine overlap is owner-of-record. Both Spokeo and our Complete tier surface the current owner's name. The difference is what surrounds it. We pair it with the full sale history, assessed value, and equity-since-purchase so you can read the deal context. Spokeo pairs it with the owner's phone numbers and known relatives, which is not useful for a home purchase and is FCRA-adjacent if you use it that way.

Try the free address check first

Drop in any U.S. address and see the FEMA flood zone and assigned school district instantly. No account, no card. If it's useful, the full report (with the other 25+ checks) starts at $19.99 one-time.

Run the free checkSee a sample report