That, at least, is how it initially feels to read BlockShopper -- a site whose new Seattle portal currently features such headlines as Senior pastor acquires Sammamish 3BD, Microsoft Corp. lawyer spends in Issaquah, and Medical couple gets 4BD in Seattle.

No, those wouldn't exactly qualify as front-page stories at a newspaper. That's exactly the point, says BlockShopper's founder. It's the type of granular information many people want -- but don't find -- in their local news. At the same time, the site can be an unsettling reminder of how easy it is to assemble a detailed picture of person's life just by pulling together information available online.

"People will say, 'That’s not a story,' " said Brian Timpone, 36, the entrepreneur and former weekly newspaper publisher who started the site as a throwback to the old days of community journalism. "Well, the traffic says it is."

BlockShopper debuted in Seattle last month. It was founded in Chicago in 2006 and has since expanded to 15 markets, with plans for more growth. The overall BlockShopper site attracts about 500,000 unique visitors a month, Timpone said.

The site's reporters start with basic real estate data -- such as selling price and square footage -- then fill out their stories with information about buyers and sellers using LinkedIn, corporate sites and other sources of online bios. They also republish photos when they're available online.

Online real estate sites such as Zillow and Redfin also offer information about sales. But Timpone said he doesn't consider BlockShopper a real estate site as much he thinks of it as a community news site that happens to tell its stories through real estate.

BlockShopper's reporters look for multiple online sources to make sure they're identifying the right people, Timpone said. But they generally don't contact the subjects prior to publication. So it can be quite a shocker when people find the stories online. It's not at all unusual for people to ask BlockShopper to take down a story. But unless there's a legitimate security concern, the site declines.

"There are some people who don’t want their neighbors to know about them," Timpone said. "We get our share of people who complain, but anybody who works in media knows you get complaints every day. The goal is to be relevant to people, and there’s no better way to do that than to write about people -- your neighbors."

Among those who didn't like it was whe big law firm Jones Day, which sued BlockShopper for trademark infringement after the site ran items on real estate deals involving two of its lawyers. The firm's suit was roundly criticized by First Amendment advocates, and BlockShopper had the support of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and other groups.

Ultimately, however, BlockShopper settled, agreeing to change the way it links to the firm.

Blockshopper raised $2 million in funding last year from a group of Chicago investors, Timpone said. It's currently in the process of rolling out advertising in selected markets.

Timpone stirred controversy before launching BlockShopper when he didn't disclose that a legal journal he published, the Madison County Record, was funded by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce as part of the group's push for tort reform.