recorder's office

Many county recorder's offices are putting their indexes of property transactions and other records online.

Some include summary information on the documents in their online databases.

But almost none put complete electronic copies of the actual documents online. In California a law was passed that prohibits recorder's offices from putting the recorded documents online, because of privacy and identity theft concerns.

One Web site that tracks which recorder's offices have their databases online is:

NETR Online

A private real estate research and information company, NETR has a map of the United States on its home page that you can click on to bring up a list of all the county agencies in a particular state that handle property sales and ownership. Those include recorder's offices.

Agencies that have web pages are noted. If an index of their property records are available online, that is flagged with a Go to Data Online link.