Method
Address History Without a Credit Header
Credit-header databases sell you an address history because they aggregate it. Every source they aggregate is public, and most of them are free.
A useful address history isn’t a list of addresses. It’s a list of addresses with dates, because dates are what let you say which one is current and which is stale.
Every source below is dated. That’s why they’re on the list.
Political contributions
Itemised federal contributions carry the donor’s street address, city, state, ZIP, employer and occupation, on the date of the gift. Someone who has given across several cycles has handed you a dated address history for free.
Run it on the political contributor search. This is the single best free source on this list when the subject appears in it at all.
Property records, searched by name
Search grantor and grantee indexes by person, not by address. That returns every deed, mortgage, discharge and lien attached to the name, each with a recording date.
Mortgage discharges are quietly valuable: a discharge dated 2021 means they were still connected to that property in 2021.
Business filings and annual reports
Annual reports name officers and their addresses as at the filing date. Pull five years of them and you have five dated snapshots.
Registered agent addresses are often a home address for a small company.
Court filings
Civil complaints, divorce petitions, probate filings and small claims all state party addresses, and the filing is dated. Probate is especially good: it lists heirs with addresses, which gives you relatives too.
Unclaimed property
Every reported item carries the address the holder had on file when they reported it. Free to search in every state, and it produces addresses for people who have gone quiet by definition — that’s why the money is unclaimed.
Professional and occupational licenses
Licensees are required to keep a current address with the board. For sole practitioners and trades, the address of record is frequently a home address, and license renewal dates give you the timeline.
Voter records, where the state allows it
Several states sell the voter file or make it inspectable. Where available it gives a current registered address and a registration date.
Massachusetts goes further with its annual street list — every resident 17 and over, by street, with date of birth, updated every January. Nothing else in the country matches it. See the Massachusetts page.
Obituaries and funeral notices
For a deceased relative rather than the subject. Obituaries name surviving family with their towns, and that’s often the fastest route to a person who has stopped appearing anywhere themselves.
Assembling it
Put every hit on one timeline with its source and date. Where two sources overlap in time and disagree, you have either a second property, a business address, or the wrong person — and knowing which is the whole job.
The most recent dated record wins, not the most recent record you found. A people-search site showing an address with no date isn’t evidence of anything. A license renewal from four months ago is.