Friend being strange with me now she's researched my financial situation

I'm signing up to deliver meals-on-wheels as I type.

your properties fund your retirement and give you an easier life. Its very hard to be on your own when you are older. Hopefully when the properties become mortgage free they will fund an early retirement in a sunny climate for you.
All true and worked for me.

I mean this kindly but please read the thread and reflect on the replies e.g. stalker, creepy, envious - as these apply to you as well.

What you are doing is incredibly intrusive and you aren't benefitting in any way at allfrom it. What you have written makes your life seem so sad and empty. Make your life busy so you have less time to ponder over other people's lives. Your nosiness or desire to embarrass people stems from something lacking in your own life. You could do useful things with all this empty time like volunteering, helping with soup kitchens, charity shops, hospital visits. You would enrich your life and find it rewarding. It might also make you grateful for what you have instead of focussing on what others have.

This is absolutely bat shit of her.

I’ll be honest - there have been times when I’ve been to a friends really nice new house and I might look up the sold price privately - because I’m a bit envious and I would like one like it - but even that feels a bit dirty be intrusive.

To research someone’s total net worth and then to disclose that you have done that to them is unhinged. I would firmly distance yourself from them. I suspect that someone who has done this is sufficiently disconnected from socially normal behaviour that it’s not worth a conversation about it…

It’s very creepy. I would distance yourself.

Agree that she's just jealous BUT I do think it's incredibly weird and intrusive of her to look into the finances of others.

MASSIVE overstep.

I'd be telling her to back off and keep her snout out.

This is such an uncomfortable thing to do, I would be so weirded out. My suggestion is next time she says an odd comment, look at her strangely and ask her to repeat it, then let a really uncomfortable awkward silence hang. Make it really uncomfortable for her and look extremely confused and bewildered. She won’t do it again.

Why are you even bothering with her. Tell her what she did is odd behaviour and its making you question your friendship. Then tell the group you are backing off a bit and the reason why. She is jealous and wouldn't piss on you if you were on fire.....

£7 to land registry and she would know. Not that I've done that. Lately.

To get to the heart of the matter, I see the seeds of a very damaging codependency here. And it's only a matter of time before the requests (read 'demands') for loans start floating in. I use the word 'loan' very loosely here. Disconnect. Block.

Bit weird to be honest. The boundaries are a bit too pourous with this one. I would look but I wouldn't tell the person I have looked, bit creepy.

Do you have mortgages on the properties ? Does she know if you do /don’t have mortgages on them surely you could just say the bank owns most of them.

I console myself by saying I am only nosy in isolation. I do not ask people their business, and I do not share what I know either. In fact I often wonder where my desire to find things out comes from, I suppose in some cases (all actually) it's to try and confirm or deny things that have been told to me by that person, so as to try and work out if they're genuine or not. I'm not sure how that pans-out when the person in question was someone I worked with 23 years ago, but hey, I'm just checking.

The only time I ever divulge information I have been told is when it is something someone told me about themselves years earlier. I have a great memory for detail, it seems. I love bumping into people decades later and shoe-horning in something they told me when we were both much younger. I like to give them the context of where & when it was that they told me, lest they think I had been told by someone else. I know I shouldn't but I do like seeing them cringe at them wondering what else I remember them saying...it has its downsides - I go through life wondering if everyone who knows me remembers the minute detail of every time I made a complete arse of myself or overshared something.

She’s a bit strange. To give her the benefit of the doubt I’d just say something like”I hope you are going to stop mentioning money to me now, it’s becoming a recurring theme and getting weird!” But I would tell everyone in the group what she has done. No reason to hide it, possibly better that it is commonly known.

Is she trying to pull some sort of saltburn situation?

It's probably not wise to picture her dancing around one of the living rooms naked to murder on the dance floor though.

Seriously though it's unhinged and abit stalkerish;I'd be given her a very wide berth and avoiding her unless it's in a social situation where you've both been invited.

This has hit the nail on the head.

OP when you are feeling down, remember that other people are very very envious of your life.

Stop being hard on yourself and appreciate the successes you have made. Make sure that when you reach seventy, you can look back at this time of your life and know that you made the most of the hand you were dealt.

I was always brought up to believe that it is crass to talk about money. One of my husband's friends is a self made millionaire but we never ever discuss our incomes.

She is jealous of you.
You have what she wants maybe?

Independence, a good circle of friends, a successful job, some buy to let properties, freedom … and a lovely dog.

Never met anyone in my life who has 'researched what I'm worth'. She sounds completely unhinged. I'd avoid her from now on.

WTAF?
I have never in my life checked out anyone's "worth" or based friendship expectations on it. One of my friends lives in a rental property, another has just sold a property for £1.1m. Our friendships are based on common interests, stimulating conversation, and having children at the same school.
I can't think of much that is more shallow than evaluating someone like this 'friend' has done.