Data Glitches Are Revealing 'Ghost Properties' — and No One Can Explain Why They Exist
City assessors across three major metro areas are reporting a sudden surge in digital property records that appear to list identical addresses with zero square footage, zero tax history, and a recorded owner that matches the previous occupant's name — who died five years ago. One analyst calls them 'orphan coordinates,' digital echoes of homes that existed online but never on the ground. The most disturbing part? All of these ghost properties share a single, five-digit sequence in their parcel IDs. The pattern is so deliberate, it's being flagged internally as a 'real estate anomaly.' No one knows who created them — or why the system keeps trying to sell them.