If you're selling a home, buying a property, or trying to document your own maintenance history for insurance purposes, you've probably encountered several different services that claim to offer "home reports." BuildFax, PropertyShark, Homefacts, HomeLedger — they all produce documents about properties, but they solve completely different problems for completely different audiences.
This guide breaks down what each service actually does, who it's designed for, and what it won't give you — so you can choose the right tool without paying for data you don't need.
Who Needs a Home History Service?
Before comparing services, it helps to name the three different use cases driving most searches in this space:
- Sellers who want to document their home's history to support asking price, reduce inspection-contingency renegotiations, and demonstrate to buyers that the home was maintained. This is a proactive, forward-looking use case.
- Buyers doing pre-purchase due diligence who want to understand a property's permit history, prior claims, or neighborhood context before making an offer. This is a research, backward-looking use case.
- Real estate professionals and lenders who need structured property data — permits, square footage, zoning, ownership history — for underwriting or valuation. This is a data-access, B2B use case.
Most services are optimized for one of these use cases, not all three. The mismatch between what a buyer wants and what a service actually provides is where most frustration comes from.
Side-by-Side Comparison
The table below covers the features that matter most for each of the three use cases above.
| Feature | HomeLedger | BuildFax | PropertyShark | Homefacts |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Permit & construction history | Owner-entered | ✓ Extensive | ✓ Available | — |
| Insurance claims (CLUE data) | ✓ Integrated | — | — | — |
| Owner-entered maintenance log | ✓ Core feature | — | — | — |
| Renovation & repair documentation | ✓ With attachments | — | — | — |
| Shareable report for buyers/insurers | ✓ Single link | — | — | — |
| Professional property data (sales, ownership, liens) | — | — | ✓ Comprehensive | Limited |
| Neighborhood / crime / school data | — | — | ✓ Available | ✓ Focus area |
| Property-level maintenance history | ✓ | — | — | — |
| Pricing | Free to start | $5–$15/report | $50–$170/mo | Free (limited) |
| Primary audience | Homeowners (sellers & insured) | Contractors, lenders, B2B | Real estate professionals | Neighborhood researchers |
BuildFax: Permits and Construction History for Professionals
BuildFax maintains one of the largest databases of building permits in the United States — covering over 150 million permits across most major markets. If you need to know whether a property had unpermitted additions, when the roof was last permitted, or what construction activity has occurred on a parcel, BuildFax is the most comprehensive source available.
The problem for individual homeowners is that BuildFax is built for a B2B audience: mortgage lenders, insurance underwriters, real estate investors, and contractors. The product is structured around data feeds and API access, not consumer-friendly reports. Individual reports cost $5–$15 each, and the interface is designed for professionals pulling dozens of reports at a time, not a homeowner trying to document their own home.
Critically, BuildFax contains no insurance claims data, no maintenance logs, and no mechanism for owners to add their own records. It tells you what permits were pulled — it cannot tell a buyer whether the roof was actually replaced correctly after the permit was closed, or what the HVAC service history looks like. For permit-specific research, it's the best tool available. For building a comprehensive property history to share with buyers, it addresses only one slice of the picture.
You're a buyer, agent, or lender and you specifically need to verify permit activity on a property — whether additions were permitted, when major systems were last permitted, or whether there's a history of unpermitted work. BuildFax is the authoritative source for that specific question.
PropertyShark: Professional-Grade Data at Professional Prices
PropertyShark aggregates a wide range of public record data: ownership history, sales transactions, tax records, liens, zoning, foreclosure filings, neighborhood demographics, and some permit data. It is the closest thing to a professional-grade property intelligence platform aimed at real estate agents, investors, and appraisers.
The depth of data is real and the platform is well-regarded in professional real estate circles. But the pricing reflects the professional market: plans run $50–$170 per month, with the most comprehensive data tiers toward the higher end. That pricing structure makes sense for agents pulling dozens of property reports monthly as part of their workflow. It makes much less sense for a homeowner who needs to build a maintenance record for their one property.
PropertyShark has no feature for owners to log their own maintenance history, attach renovation invoices, or build a living record of what they've done to their home. Like BuildFax, it aggregates public records — it doesn't give homeowners a tool to create and maintain their own property documentation. And there is no CLUE report integration: PropertyShark does not include insurance claims history, which is one of the most significant factors in how buyers and insurers evaluate a property's risk profile.
Homefacts: Neighborhood Data, Not Property History
Homefacts is a free service that compiles publicly available neighborhood-level information: crime statistics, school ratings, environmental data, natural disaster risk, and some demographic context. It's straightforward to use and genuinely useful for buyers trying to understand the area around a property they're considering.
What Homefacts doesn't provide — and doesn't attempt to provide — is any property-specific maintenance history. There are no records of what work has been done on a home, no permit history, no insurance claims data, and no mechanism for owners to document anything. It's a neighborhood intelligence tool, not a property history tool. Searching for "home history" and landing on Homefacts is a common mismatch: the name is misleading relative to what the service actually delivers at the property level.
For buyers doing neighborhood research, Homefacts is a useful free resource. For sellers wanting to document their home or for homeowners building a record for insurance purposes, it provides nothing relevant.
HomeLedger: Documentation Built for Homeowners
HomeLedger addresses the use case that none of the other services serve: helping homeowners document their own maintenance history, renovation records, and insurance claims data — and present that documentation to buyers and insurers in a usable format.
The core product is a home history report that owners build over time by logging maintenance entries, attaching invoices and photos, and importing their CLUE report data. The result is a single shareable link that buyers can review during due diligence — not a pile of PDFs, and not a system built for someone else to use.
This combination — insurance claims data alongside documented maintenance proof — is what makes HomeLedger different from every other service in this comparison. A CLUE report shows what claims were filed. A maintenance log shows what work was done to address those claims. Together, they tell the complete story of how a home was cared for. No other service connects these two data sources.
HomeLedger combines CLUE data, maintenance logs, and renovation records in one shareable property report — no other service does all three.
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The choice is mostly determined by your situation — not your preferences:
- You're selling your home and want to present buyers with a documented maintenance history: HomeLedger. Start logging now; documentation you create today is documentation buyers can review in 12 months.
- You want to lower your homeowners insurance premiums with proof of system upgrades: HomeLedger. The CLUE integration plus maintenance documentation gives insurers what they need to apply discounts.
- You're a buyer who needs to verify permit activity on a specific property: BuildFax, or ask the seller to pull the permit history directly from the county assessor (often free).
- You're a real estate professional who needs comprehensive ownership, sales, and lien data regularly: PropertyShark, at the professional tier that matches your pull volume.
- You're a buyer researching a neighborhood — schools, crime, environmental risk: Homefacts, supplemented with the local municipality's data portals.
The most common mistake is paying for professional data tools when you actually need a documentation tool — or vice versa. BuildFax and PropertyShark tell you what happened to a property in public records. They can't document what you've done to your home, and that documentation is what moves the needle at resale and on insurance renewals.
The fundamental difference is who creates the data. BuildFax, PropertyShark, and Homefacts all aggregate records that exist in public databases — they pull data about your property. HomeLedger gives you the tools to build a record of your property — then put it in front of the people who need to see it.
For homeowners who've invested in maintaining their home and want that investment to show up at sale or renewal time, the documentation you build now is the asset. Learn exactly what to document and how to organize it.
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