Property Records Explained: Deeds, Assessor, Recorder and Parcel Numbers

Every question about a house eventually leads to the county. How much land comes with it, who sold it to whom and for how much, whether a mortgage is still recorded, why the tax bill jumped: the answers sit in three offices whose names change from state to state but whose jobs do not. If your question is simply who owns a property, the owner lookup guide walks through that search screen by screen; this article is about understanding what you find.

Three offices, three types of property records

A county splits its property records by function. Los Angeles County, the example throughout this article, is typical: the assessor and the tax collector are free to search online, and the recorder sells copies of any recorded document to anyone¹²³.

The names vary. In Texas, county appraisal districts do the assessor's job and the tax assessor-collector sends the bills⁴. In New York, towns and cities assess, and the state publishes equalization rates because municipalities assess at different fractions of market value⁵. In California, 58 elected county assessors work under the oversight of the State Board of Equalization⁶. Whatever the labels, look for the three functions: who values, who records, who collects.

The parcel number: the key that ties everything together

Street addresses are unreliable keys. They change, they are missing for vacant land, and one parcel can carry several. Counties therefore assign each piece of land a unique identifier, the Assessor's Parcel Number (APN), which Los Angeles County calls the Assessor's Identification Number (AIN): a ten-digit code in the form 1234-567-890, made of a four-digit map book number, a three-digit page number and a three-digit parcel number¹³. The map book and page point to a physical assessor's map; the parcel number is the lot drawn on it.

Searching by address works for the first step; after that, copy the parcel number. It appears on the assessor page, on the tax bill and usually on the deed, and it produces the same parcel in all three offices. When a lot is split or merged the county retires the old numbers and issues new ones, so a 1975 deed may carry a number that no longer exists; the assessor's map history bridges the gap.

Deeds, titles, mortgages and liens

Four words are used interchangeably in conversation and mean different things in the record.

Deed. The written instrument by which an owner (the grantor) transfers an interest in real estate to another (the grantee). It is signed, notarized and recorded; once recorded it is public and gives notice to the world²⁷. A deed proves a transfer, not the absence of problems.

Title. The legal right of ownership. Title is not a document; it is the conclusion drawn from the chain of deeds and the absence of competing claims. A chain of title is the sequence of recorded transfers from the earliest grant to the current owner; a gap or a defective deed in the chain is a title defect.

Mortgage or deed of trust. The recorded security instrument that gives a lender a claim on the property until the loan is repaid. California uses deeds of trust; when the loan is paid, a reconveyance is recorded.

Lien. A recorded claim against the property for a debt: property tax liens, mechanics' liens, judgment liens, federal and state tax liens, HOA liens. Liens follow the property, not the person, which is why a buyer's title search reads every recorded instrument, not just the deeds.

The seller's own disclosures are records too, though they are not recorded: a California seller must deliver the statutory Real Estate Transfer Disclosure Statement on the form in Civil Code § 1102.6⁸. Keep it with the deed.

How to read an assessor record

An assessor page is dense but follows a pattern. In Los Angeles County the Assessor Portal shows, for each AIN, the situs address, the land value and the improvement value that together form the assessed value, any exemptions, the recording date of the last transfer, and characteristics such as lot size, square footage, year built, bedrooms and baths¹. Most counties' portals print the owner of record and the mailing address on the same page. Los Angeles County's public portal does not display the owner's name; there you take the name from the last recorded deed at the Registrar-Recorder².

Three fields deserve attention:

• Land vs. improvement value. The split tells you what the county thinks the land is worth against the building. A high land share in an older neighborhood signals redevelopment pressure; it also matters for depreciation if you rent the property out.
• Exemptions. In California the homeowners' exemption reduces the taxable value of an owner-occupied principal residence by $7,000¹¹. Its presence is a reasonable sign that the owner lives there; its absence, together with a mailing address elsewhere, is the classic absentee flag.
• Mailing address. Where the tax bill goes; it sits on the assessment roll, the bill and most assessor pages. When it differs from the situs address, the owner lives elsewhere, the property is rented, or a trustee or company manages it. When the vesting shows an entity instead of a person, the article on LLC- and trust-held homes shows how to read it.

The assessed value is a tax number, not a market number. Assessors value in bulk under mass-appraisal standards, and the International Association of Assessing Officers publishes both the standard for doing so and the ratio-study standard for measuring how far assessments sit from sale prices⁹. In California, Proposition 13 sets the base-year value at the appraised value when the property is purchased, newly built or changes ownership, and lets it rise with inflation by no more than 2 percent a year, so a long-held home is often assessed far below what it would sell for¹⁰. In New York a municipality may assess at a fraction of market value; the state's equalization rate (total assessed value divided by total market value) translates the assessment back to full value⁵. In Texas, appraisal districts set the value, and an owner who disagrees has until May 15, or 30 days from the district's notice if that comes later, to protest to the appraisal review board⁴. The comparison of tax assessment and market value covers appeals in detail.

This is general information, not legal or tax advice.

Deed types decoded

The title of a deed tells you what the grantor promised.

Two details on the face of a recorded deed are worth decoding. The documentary transfer tax declared on the deed, which Los Angeles County collects under Revenue and Taxation Code § 11911 when a transfer is recorded, is calculated on the consideration, so the tax amount lets anyone back out the approximate sale price in a disclosure state⁷. And the vesting line (for example "John Doe and Jane Doe, husband and wife, as community property with right of survivorship" or "Jane Doe, Trustee of the Doe Family Trust") tells you how title is held, which determines who has to sign the next deed.

Field by field through a Los Angeles County assessor page

The Assessor Portal returns a page like the one below for any address or AIN in the county¹. The figures here are invented for illustration; the layout is the real one.

What the page does not tell you is what the house would sell for today: Proposition 13 caps the assessment while the market moves¹⁰, and bridging that gap takes recent sales, which is where a valuation report comes in.

Public records in a CheckValue report, and the title search it is not

For a US address, the CheckValue report starts from the same county files this article describes and adds the one thing no county office can supply: what the parcel would sell for now. Two parts of it matter here.

The record, condensed. The owner of record appears with the owner type (person, trust or company), the date of the last sale and the mailing city, next to the parcel's characteristics: the assessor page and the last deed on one screen, each item with its source.

The gap between assessed and market value, measured. The worked example stopped at an assessed value of $500,000 for a house last transferred in 2014. The report closes that gap with recent comparable sales near the parcel, each with distance and closing date, and with the official price index for the area, which shows how far the market has moved since the Proposition 13 base year¹⁰. For a rented parcel it adds a rent estimate and gross yield, figures no assessor keeps.

It is not a title search or a lien search: it does not read the full chain of title, tell you whether a deed of trust has been reconveyed, or find judgment and tax liens. For a purchase you still need a title report from a title company, and it is not a licensed appraisal.

Owner-of-record data comes from public county records and is provided for property research. It may not be used to decide on anyone's credit, employment, insurance or tenancy; those uses fall under the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), a law written for consumer reporting agencies, which CheckValue is not. Which sources stand behind each section is set out on the help pages; the free preview shows what is included for an address.

Common errors in property records and how to correct them

Public records are kept by people and fed by forms, so they contain mistakes. The frequent ones:

• Wrong square footage or room count on the assessor page. Often an unpermitted addition, or an old field survey. Contact the assessor with a floor plan or an appraisal; a correction can raise your assessment, so check the consequences first.
• Misspelled owner name or stale mailing address. Both usually come from the deed as recorded. A stale mailing address is fixed with a change-of-address form to the assessor and the tax collector; a misspelled name needs a corrective deed or an affidavit, recorded.
• Unreleased deed of trust. The lender was paid but never recorded the reconveyance. Ask the lender for the reconveyance; if the lender no longer exists, the title company that closed the loan or the current insurer can usually clear it.
• Missing exemption. If you live in the home and the homeowners' exemption is absent, file the claim with the assessor; it reduces the taxable value by $7,000 in California¹¹.
• Assessment out of line with the market. Every state has an appeal route with a deadline: in Texas the protest goes to the appraisal review board and is due May 15, or 30 days from the notice when that date is later⁴; in California the county assessment appeals board hears it; in New York the local board of assessment review does. Ratio studies of the kind the IAAO standardizes are how assessment quality is measured⁹.
• Wrong parcel drawn on the map. Lot lines on assessor maps are for taxation, not a survey. When boundaries matter, a licensed surveyor and the recorded subdivision map govern, not the assessor's drawing.

For professionals who look up owners at volume, the guide to owner lookups for agents and investors covers the legal frame and the workflow from record to letter.

This is general information, not legal or tax advice.

This article is general information, not legal, tax or investment advice. Figures and rules carry the year they were published; check the cited source for the current version.

Josef Eckmair MBA

Co-founder, CheckValue · Managing director, CBDNOL GmbH · More than 20 years in real estate in Tenerife and Austria · Reviewed by Christian Eckmair

Josef Eckmair MBA is co-founder of CheckValue and managing director of CBDNOL GmbH (Ansfelden, Austria). He has more than 20 years of real estate experience in Tenerife and Austria and writes about appraisals, taxes, selling costs and valuations for professionals.

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