Typically a mortgage will require the buyer to intend to use the property as their primary residence. If you want a loan to buy a house you intend to rent, you get a rider on the mortgage to that effect. So it is in the public records, if you used a purchase loan.

Unless a home is purchased through a corporate or private trust laws around this vary by state, the homeowner is listed on a public state government database. Each state has their own unique system and each state has different bits of data. Some make it harder to reverse query by name rather than plot number, varies by state. There are some sites that index this data making reverse searches by name easier.

If the private citizen is a renter there is another database used by rental companies that operates similar to a credit rating system, the name escapes me, but it's open to a large number of people to query. That system shows all current and prior residence of renters as well as missed payments and even has notes for problematic renters including but not limited to late payments, evictions, property damage, etc...

If you own the home, then it'll be public through the county GIS. But you'd probably need to know the state/county first to find it.

You may be too young to remember...

Several years ago I hear a guy on the radio telling people to be very careful. There was a place where people could get your name, your address, even your phone number, all for free... if they knew where to look.

Listeners called in, some incensed that the MC/DJ whatever was even talking about it.

After a few minutes, he exposed the secret. It was... the phone book.