How to Find Property Owners
Locating property owners can be tricky and time consuming, but users who are wondering about how to find property owners, keeping a few things in mind will make the task much easier. Utilizing county records and county websites is free and readily accessible because it is public information; however, there are other websites that provide access to property records for a fee, and others that will do the actual searching and return results for a price. For those looking for how to find property owners free, here are some simple steps.
Use the internet and property address. Locate the website of the county the address is listed in and users can access property records such as taxes along with the names of the property owners. If you do not know what county the address is in, the first step is to conduct an internet search for the county. In the search box of your favorite search engine, try typing in a search string such as "What county is (insert city name) in?" or "What county is (insert entire address) in?" This should bring up a plethora of results; choose one of the top three websites returned to locate the county.
Next, search for that county's webpage. In the search box of the search engine, type in a keyword search string such as "(County name)" or "(County name) website"; more than likely this will return the county's actual website at the top of the results list.
Once you are on the site, search for the assessor's office or department. A county assessor is responsible for evaluating all property in a county for the purposes of property tax evaluation. This office will have property owner records readily available.
After locating the webpage of the county assessor's office, look for a link to ownership listings or property owners. If the records are not available online, many counties will provide listings from their offices. To request a listing, contact the assessor's office by phone or email with the information you have, and they most likely they will accommodate your request.
For those offices that have the records available online, many counties organize listings and make them easily searchable by a query request. Users may be able to search by taxing authority or address, others by school districts or township. Whatever the search criteria are, the results will include property owners who fit those conditions. For instance, if a user searches by school district, the query results will include property owners within that school district. If the user has an address at this point, he or she will be able to search these records easily to find the address and locate the names of the property owners.
To search the results easily within a user's web browser, look under the "edit" menu and locate the "find" function. Because each browser is different, these directions may change a bit. Once the browser's search box opens, the user can type in the address they are searching for and the browser will immediately locate it on the search page if it is present. Users should make sure to look and see if there is more than one page of results; if there is, it will be necessary to repeat this browser search process for each page of results.
