I am sooo mad I just gave a huge responce and my IE closed on me..... sorry I am going to try again here!
There is alot of public information on the internet such as what someone pays for their house, you generally need to know the county they are in then you can do a property search from there, this is useful in finding out what THEY paid for the house and therefor giving you a heads up on whether they can go lower in the asking price or not
some examples of the sites where you can get this info is here, this is the site for the county I live in here in mn
Beacon Home
another example of a site for this info in mi
https://is.bsasoftware.com/bsa.is/As...pid=0&unit=383
okay this is for fl records I found this by accident on google
Calhoun County Property Appraiser's Office