Perhaps you're thinking of home purchase records? Real estate title transfers are public, so if you buy a house in your own name, there will be a public record of that. But you can move, and AFAIK there is no annotation in the record of whether you intend to inhabit or rent out the purchased property.
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...
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.