Who owns a property in the United States is public record, and the record lives with the county (or, in parts of New England, the town) where the land sits. Two offices hold it: the assessor, whose tax roll lists the owner of record and a mailing address for every parcel, and the recorder or register of deeds, who files the deed that transferred title. You can look either up yourself, usually for free, on the county's website. Or you can use a national lookup such as PropRaven's property owner lookup, which searches those same county records across all 50 states and DC and is free for 1,000 lookups a month with no card. This guide covers both routes and what the record actually tells you.
The steps
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Start with the address, or better, the parcel number. A street address is what you have; a parcel number is what the county keys everything to. If you have a tax bill, a closing statement or an old deed, the parcel number is on it. If not, the address will get you there. Note which county the property is in, since city limits and county lines do not always agree.
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Find the county assessor's property search. Search for the county name plus "property search" or "parcel search." The office is called the assessor in most states, the property appraiser in Florida, the auditor in parts of Ohio, and the town assessor across much of New England. Nearly every county now has an online search by address, owner name or parcel number. A few still require a phone call or an in-person visit.
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Read the owner of record and the mailing address. The assessor's record shows the owner name as the county carries it for tax purposes, the mailing address where the tax bill goes, and the property's own site (situs) address. Note the "as of" or "last updated" date if one is shown. When the mailing address differs from the site address, the owner probably does not live there.
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Confirm against the most recent deed. The recorder's index is a separate search, usually by name or by instrument number. Look for the latest deed on the property: it names the grantor (seller) and grantee (buyer), the recording date, and the book and page or instrument number. Assessor rolls typically lag deeds by weeks to months, so a property that just sold may still show the prior owner on the tax roll while the deed already shows the new one.
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If the owner is an LLC or a trust, decide how far you need to go. An LLC's registered agent and organizer are on file with the state's Secretary of State business search, which is free. A trust is generally a private document; the deed names the trustee, not the beneficiaries. Neither source reliably tells you the natural person who controls the entity.
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Or run one search that does steps 2 through 4 for you. A national lookup pulls the assessor and recorder data together so the owner, mailing address, deed history and related parcels appear on one record. That is what the rest of this guide describes for PropRaven, but the county portal remains the free, authoritative source and is worth knowing how to read.
What the record actually contains
The details vary by county, but the two record types are consistent in shape.
The assessor record carries the parcel number, the owner name as recorded (often LAST FIRST, sometimes with ET AL, ETUX or TRUSTEE), the mailing address, the situs address, assessed values split into land and improvement, the property class or land-use code, and physical characteristics such as year built, building area and lot size. Many counties also show the last sale date and, where the state discloses it, the last sale price.
The deed is the legal instrument. It names grantor and grantee, states the recording date and document type (warranty, quitclaim, trustee's deed and so on), gives the legal description of the land, and carries a recording reference. The consideration is stated in some states and inferred from transfer-tax stamps in others.
What neither record contains: a phone number, an email address, whether the owner actually lives at the property (that is inferred by comparing addresses), or the beneficial owner behind a company or trust.
Common pitfalls
- Name formats differ. Counties record owners in their own conventions. One county writes "SMITH JOHN A", another "SMITH, JOHN A & JANE B". Searching by name across counties means trying variants.
- The roll lags the deed. A recent sale may show the old owner on the assessor's roll for a while. When the two disagree, the recorded deed is the more current answer.
- Some owner names are withheld. Feeds in New Jersey, Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and (under Prop 13) parts of California withhold some owner names at the publishing layer, and many states have confidentiality programs for judges, law-enforcement officers and abuse survivors. Expect blanks, not errors.
- Mailing address is not residence. A mailing address can be a property manager, an accountant, a relative or a P.O. box.
- Sale prices are not always public. A dozen or so states, Texas the best known, do not put the sale price on the public deed. A record with no price is not necessarily incomplete.
- Condos and multi-parcel properties. A condo unit is usually its own parcel with its own owner; a large property may span several parcels that each list the same owner.
Where PropRaven fits
PropRaven's property owner lookup takes a street address, an owner name or a city and returns the owner of record from county assessor and recorder data. Results open in parcel search, where each record shows the owner name as the county carries it, the owner's mailing address alongside the site address, the sales history with buyer, seller, deed type and sale price where disclosed, permits, assessed and market value, and a hazard summary. An absentee flag compares the mailing and site addresses and classifies a mismatch as out-of-state, out-of-county, local absentee or P.O. box. For an LLC, trust or person, PropRaven resolves the name to a canonical owner and lists the portfolio of parcels it holds, and where it has linked an LLC or trust to a parent entity it shows that link. It does not resolve beneficial ownership, the controlling natural person behind an entity, which requires Secretary of State filings and FinCEN access.
The Free plan is the product: 1,000 lookups a month, the full record in the web app, no card required. Owner name is the field counties redact most, and PropRaven leaves it empty rather than guessing; each county page under parcel data publishes the share of that county's records that carry an owner name, so you can check a jurisdiction before you rely on it.
For developers, the same lookup is one call over the REST API: GET /api/v1/parcels/{id}/owner returns owner details and a portfolio summary, GET /api/v1/owners/search searches owners by name, and typed SDKs ship for Python, TypeScript and Go. Inside Claude, Cursor or any MCP-compatible agent, the hosted MCP server at https://propraven.com/mcp exposes parcel_lookup and owner_pierce for the same job.
None of this replaces the county portal, which is free and authoritative for one property in one county. It replaces the part where you repeat the process across many counties, each with its own website, its own name conventions and its own idea of what a parcel number looks like.