The Expert Podcast

So is it possible to determine if there is a lien on a piece of real estate on a property? And the answer is yes. Property records, real estate records, are considered public records—open to the public. They're open records. Unlike motor vehicle records or some other types of documentation, real estate records are open, and you can access those at the county level. There are 3,611 counties in the country, and every county has a recording system for real estate documents—things like liens, mortgages, deeds, quitclaim deeds.

And if a piece of real estate has a lien against it, that document needs to be filed at the county recorder's office. There are several ways to search this. First of all, you can run a commercial title search. There are many companies that run title searches and can determine if there's a lien on it. You can actually access the records of that county yourself.

Now, don't make the mistake of trying to do an online Google search. Don't type in “property lien 12 Main Street” in Google, because you will get some results, and they might even look like they have records. There are some companies that might charge you a fee to tell you if there's a lien, but those are not the official real estate records. You may find yourself paying five or ten dollars to some online, you know, document companies—xyz.com—and not know if there's a lien on the piece of real estate.

The only 100% accurate way to determine a lien is to go in person to the county recorder's office in the county where the property is—not where you are, but where the property is. You're going to run a document search, an index search, for that property. And there's instructions on how to do that in other videos.

But the reason you want to go in person, even if your county has something that's online that looks like it allows you to do searches online—don’t use the online system. In fact, if you look at the bottom of that website, it'll tell you, “these are not the official records for real estate.” There may be errors. There may be omissions.

And so, if you're searching for a lien on real estate, presumably the reason you want to know the answer to that question is because it's something important to you, right? It's something that has a need for you to know. And we're not talking about, you know, a lien on a lawnmower. Real estate is an expensive decision. Whether you're buying it, lending on it—you want to know if there's a lien.

And spending the time—whether it's a half an hour, an hour—to go down to the courthouse to find out for sure in person is probably worth it. If it's not worth spending that much time to do or spending, you know, a couple hundred dollars for a title search, then don't try to take a shortcut and use some other method of doing it.

Don't use an online search. Don't use some third-party, you know, realestaterecords.com—whatever it is. And again, I don't know anything about that website. I'm just saying in general, a generic website that you click and it pops up on your screen—anything that pops up on your screen instantly is not going to be 100% accurate.

The only way you want to get a title search is if somebody goes to the courthouse in person, pulls paper documents from books, reads them to determine if there's a lien, and gives you a title report—whether you do it or somebody else does it. Anything that's online, that's instant, has the likelihood that it's not going to be 100% accurate.

So you could determine if there's a lien. You know, liens have to be recorded. There are some liens that are not directly recorded against the property. They might be recorded against a person, and if they own a property, sometimes it automatically attaches.

For example, if somebody has a tax lien against them from the IRS, if they own property in that county, even though there's not a lien directly recorded against 12 Main Street, if it's recorded against Joe Smith and he owns 12 Main Street, you may find that there's a constructive lien against that property. So be aware of how liens attach to properties.

And again, we're not attorneys. We're not giving you legal advice. If you do need more legal determination, you know, get legal opinions from a qualified attorney. But if you want more information about how liens are searched or how to determine on a property, you can check out various resources online.

The most important thing is: a lien on real estate is an important thing to know about. There are many kinds—there's construction liens, there are tax liens, there are HOA liens—and in fact, a mortgage is a form of a lien. It's a voluntary lien. When you get a mortgage on a property, you are voluntarily letting the bank put a lien on your property because they're lending you money. So a mortgage is a form of a lien.

Liens come in many forms—child support liens, bail bond liens. Make sure you're getting all of them so you don't miss a hidden lien that could result in you making a bad decision on a piece of real estate.