Last updated on May 22nd, 2023 at 12:21 pm

Have you ever driven past a house and fallen in love with the property? Instead of wondering what could have been, you should consider the options at your disposal. With a property owner search, you can reach out and make an offer directly. Public property records search services, and other convenient property owner lookup channels exist to help you track the owner of a property online. 

How To Conduct a Property Owner Search?

Most people start by Googling the property’s address when they’d like to get in touch with an owner, but it’s not the most effective way of getting the contact details you need. The best way to find a property owner is through a property records search that uses property history public records as its main database. 

Public records are records of publicly available information, like births, marriages, deaths, divorces – and property purchases. Property history public records are non-confidential and provide a great deal of insight and transparency regarding various properties. While the information is readily available, it might not be easy to access or find what you are looking for, so consider your options carefully:

1. Use the County Tax Assessor Office 

When you own a property, you have to pay taxes on it. The county tax assessor will have the data on record, and it’s free to access. If you know the property’s identification number, it makes it much easier to track it down. In some counties, this number is called the Assessor’s Identification Number, the STRAP (Section, Township, Range, Area, and Parcel) number, or STRABL (Section Township Range Area Block Lot) number. It can be tricky finding what you are looking for, depending on the county the property is located in. You can’t refine lists, and the information is quite limited. Nevertheless, you should be able to find the owner’s name and mailing address this way. 

2. Speak to a County Clerk

The County Records Office is the place to go for property documents. They usually keep a record of real estate information like the notice of sale, the deeds of trust, bill of sale, mortgages, tax liens, and trust deeds. It’s an absolute goldmine of information, but there is such a thing as too much information. The County Recorder office has a massive library of documents to shift through. If you just need a name and address, the Tax Assessor is better. 

3. Ask Your Realtor 

You can ask a local real estate agent to provide you with a Focused Real Estate Marketing List. These lists contain the name, address, mailing list, and essential property characteristics of a property. Many are provided free of charge, although some states have strict rules about the information that can be made available. Of course, there’s a chance that your real estate professional might not be keen to hand over the information to you and insist on brokering the deal on your behalf, which is fine if you are interested in purchasing the property. But if you aren’t interested in buying the property and aren’t going to earn a commission off the deal, they might just show you the door. 

4. Use a Property Owner Search Platform 

If you need an accurate, easy-to-use service to find a nearby property owner, use a property owner search platform. See this property search article that explains how to search for a property owner by name using a dedicated lookup service. These services have several benefits over the other services on this list, including mixing and matching properties, owners, demographic data, nationwide property owner lookups, GPS functionality, and links to social media profiles, emails, and phone numbers. They might not be free – but they are easy to use and speedy. If you need multiple lookup properties, a property owner search platform is definitely the only route worth taking. You can usually find out a lot more about a property than just the owner’s name, too, which can help you make a final decision if you are thinking about purchasing it.

Conclusion 

Conducting a property owner search doesn’t have to be an onerous and time-intensive process. Using the right online tools can find the property owner (and much more) in record time.