real-estate
Why do some properties appear in public records, but others don&#39;t?
<p>I know a woman who owns multiple properties; interestingly, only one is searchable in public record.</p>

<p>Is there some sort of law that all the names of people who buy property can or must go into public records unless asked otherwise? I wonder because it seems weird that her name appears as the owner of property 'X' though not searchable for property 'Y' or 'Z,' and she owns all three properties.</p>

<p>I asked and she never even knew any of this was in public record and thus never asked for any of it to be removed. Is there are any reason why one of her <strong>owned</strong> properties is listed in public records under her name, but the other two aren't? What laws dictate this kind of stuff/how does this work?</p>

<p>Public records property owner info vs. real property owned that doesn't appear in public records, such as people search sites/etc. I'd imagine that, if she didn't explicitly state to be removed from listing, any property under her name would be found. I tried reverse property search and found nothing either.</p>

<p>What kind of law, premise, or arrangements dictate this kind of info and its publicly accessible nature?</p>

<p>It is common for people to purchase real estate through LLCs or other vehicles to shield them from personal liability. Say, if someone slips and falls on ice on the stairs, it could open the property owner to personal liability. An LLC offers some form of protection.</p>

<p>Also, as you already discovered, assets don't show up when you search by name. Again, this offers some form of protection when lawyers go searching for whom to sue based on who has <em>deep pockets</em>.</p>

<p>Another possibility is that some records in some jurisdictions just aren't online yet. And they are not searchable unless you travel to the court or clerk's office and search the court records personally.</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>What kind of law, premise, or arrangements dictate this kind of info
  and its publicly accessible nature?</p>
</blockquote>

<p>It depends on the jurisdiction.</p>

<p>The general rule is that there are no centralised records. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torrens_title#Background" rel="nofollow">Back in the bad old days in England</a>, if you bought land then you had better have made sure the vendor could give you a full set of deeds showing who sold it to whom all the way back to the Norman Conquest, or you were liable to some smart-alec turning up with better title and kicking you out.</p>

<p>In Australia (and many other places), we have Torrens title, which means that (pretty much) all land is registered with a government agency called something like the 'Land Titles Office' or 'Registrar of Titles'. Torrens title only exists where it is created by legislation. The relevant legislation would specify what records are made public and how.</p>

<p>In Victoria, Australia, the relevant legislation is the <a href="http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/vic/consol_act/tola1958160/" rel="nofollow">Transfer of Land Act 1958 (Vic)</a>. Section 27 provides for the contents of the register of titles. Section 114 says that anybody can come in and have a look at the register of titles i.e. see who owns what, and that the Registrar may give someone a certificate reproducing information from those records (for a fee). Section 27C(3) provides for access to historical records (who bought what when, even if they subsequently sold it).</p>

<p>The Victorian Registrar of Titles has kindly put most of this information into a computer database and made it available online (for a fee). For a fee, you can get a bulk download of the entire thing, which a number of companies have done so they can publish the information online, sell it, or combine it with other data. Another example is when you want to build a freeway; you can go to the Registrar of Titles and (for a fee) get a list of all the property owners along your desired route so you can talk to them about selling their land to you (see also <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Castle_%281997_Australian_film%29" rel="nofollow">'compulsory acquisition'</a>).</p>

<p>Apart from government property records, another important source of information about property dealings is real estate agents. In each State and territory of Australia, real estate agents report sales to their local real estate institutes, who have arrangements with various companies to sell the data. However, this data set does not include proprietor names. Companies will collect data from both real estate institutes and government title registers and publish the combined data set. The legal arrangements around this kind of data include various contracts and the Privacy Act in each State and territory (and the Commonwealth). </p>

<p>I don't know much about US property law but I get the impression from television that all property records are kept in the local courthouse and you can fish around in the filing cabinets if you are sassy to the person at the front counter.</p>

<p>The next question is, as mentioned in other answers, what name the property is registered in. This can be a trustee's name. If the trustee is a company then, depending on the jurisdiction that the company is registered in, there might be a record of its ownership. If someone is motivated by privacy then they will set up a company in a jurisdiction that does not splash their name around e.g. <a href="https://www.delawareinc.com/blog/what-is-on-public-records-delaware/" rel="nofollow">Delaware</a> or the <a href="http://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/harry-potter-star-bought-3m-home-via-tax-haven-jjqw0fr56" rel="nofollow">British Virgin Islands</a>.</p>

<p>Then you ask whether you are typing in the address correctly or are you searching an incomplete database. Some systems are picky about how you format the address; perhaps they record the address as Springfield East and you are typing in West Shelbyville. In terms of incompleteness, if the last transaction on a property was 50 or even 30 years ago then in a hypothetical jurisdiction the relevant document might not have been scanned/keyed into the online database.</p>

<p>"Public domain" refers to a copyright concept. As for public records of property, there is massive variation by county (in the US) as to what information is made available online. In my former county, one could search the assessor's database by last name and directly get any matching properties, but in my current county, you have to have a street address or parcel number. In principle, that information is knowable although county web pages may be somewhat suboptimal for people used to ease of Googling everything. There may also be a date before which records are not available online. One can, sometimes, request <a href="http://www.statutes.legis.state.tx.us/Docs/TX/htm/TX.25.htm" rel="nofollow">confidentiality of tax records</a>, but that does not apply to the fact of ownership.  A property owner is liable for what his property does to others, and you have to know who to sue in order to sue the guy whose tree fell on your car, so the fact of owning a piece of property is not a secret. If you appear at the county recorder's office and request to know who owns a particular parcel (there may be a search fee), I believe that you can probably find out. </p>
