What this is
pastdoor is an address-first record. For every property we cover, the canonical page is the place — not the listing, not the owner, not the celebrity who once slept there. The page assembles permits, sales, archival photos, building history, and — when the evidence is strong enough and the people are no longer living — the names and dates of those associated with it.
What this is not
- Not a database of where living people live. We don’t accept, infer, or display current residences of living individuals. Our database trigger raises an exception if anyone tries.
- Not a real-estate listing site. Sales, photos, and "available now" content are walled off into a clearly-labeled sponsored module that never touches the historical record.
- Not a tourist map. The product’s register is editorial and archival, not "your guided bus tour of where Marilyn lived."
Source tiers
Every fact on a public page carries one of three badges. Tier D — social leads — never renders publicly; it lives in our editorial queue.
- AGovernment record. Assessor parcel data, recorded deeds, building permits.
- BArchive. Sanborn maps, HABS/HAER, library special collections, museum holdings.
- CVerified secondary. Architect monographs, dated newspaper articles, historical society publications.
The 1978–1984 anchor
Rental projections do not use a flat 3% inflation assumption. They’re anchored to the observed shape of the LA County 1978-1984 cycle — first leg up (+18%/yr), rate-shock stall (-12%), recovery (+19%) — pulled directly from FRED’s LA County HPI series. Every projection on screen carries its anchor window and a confidence dot. We will not display a forecast without showing what historical cycle it’s anchored to.
Beverly Hills, then onward
We start with Beverly Hills because the city publishes its permit feed nightly, the public library holds an unusual depth of architectural archives, and Sanborn coverage is dense for the era we care about. From there: West Hollywood, Hollywood, broader LA County, then Santa Monica and the Westside. The product expands in concentric rings, not by national rollout.
If your address is here
You can claim it for free and add photos, private notes, and home records. The historical ledger remains independent — your edits live alongside it, never on top of it.
If you’re selling or hosting it
You can promote your current Zillow / Redfin / Airbnb listing on top of the page for $29/mo. The placement is visually walled off, source-logo’d, and never written into the historical record.