[El Gato]

I know that you can look up the historical ownership of houses, but how do we know the owners didn’t rent it out?

Telephone book? Look up the owner's name. If they show at that address, they probably lived there. But you'd have a hard time finding who did live there...unless you had a specific name in mind and looked them up in the phone book and they showed up at that address.

But the location would have been much too expensive for a knocked up freshman and her foreign student husband.

[nufsed]

We’re realtors and we can look up ownership history in most states. When you bring up the tax report it will show past owners.