What record do you pull before you wire on a vacant lot?

Question

For the people here buying vacant land sight-unseen: what do you actually check before the wire goes out? Not the whole list of things you know you should check. The one or two records you bother to pull every time, and in which county.

I ask because I spend most of my working days in county record rooms, and I keep being wrong about which document actually kills a deal for other people. Mine is the legal description matching the parcel number. A friend's is the tax record showing who has been paying, because it tells him who has been claiming it.

If you name a county, I'll pull one record there and post what I find back in this thread, at no charge, for the first three or four that come in. If you'd rather not put your own county in a room full of wholesalers, name one you might look at someday instead. And say if there's anything you want kept out of the thread and I'll keep it out.

Nothing to buy, nothing to sign up for. I want to know which counties people here are working and which documents they trust.

AI use disclosed: I use AI tools in my record work and in drafting this. Saying so because the rules ask.

Paul ILands · Answer

Don, Justine, same question from both of you, so one straight answer.

I don't keep a national league table. I keep a per-county checklist, and I've only worked a handful of Florida counties closely, so take this as shape rather than ranking.

The surprise is almost never the county. It's what the parcel page leaves out. A 10,000 sf vacant R-1 lot I pulled in North Port this fall: one owner since 2002, last sale $13,000, assessed at $9,800, asking $17,500, FEMA Zone X out. Clean page. Nothing on it stops a wire. What it doesn't tell you is that 35 of the 44 parcels on that same street are also vacant. Whether that lot is worth $17,500 is mostly a question about the street, and the street is not in the record. The assessor page was built to answer "who owns it and what's it worth." It was never built to answer "what takes it, and what's beside it."

Which is why your two lists are worth more than any county ranking. Title commitment running the full chain, survey or recorded plat matching the legal description on the contract line for line, open tax certificate before the wire. All three of those can be pre-checked against the public record before anyone pays for a commitment, and the pre-check is exactly where the portal fails. Plenty of counties index by name only, so a lien filed under a prior owner or a trust stays invisible unless you already know the name to type.

So here's the trade, no charge and nothing to sign up for: name the county and the parcel you're actually funding and I'll run your three items against that county's public portal and post back which of the three you cannot get there for free. If the honest answer is "all three, go pay the title company," I'll post that too.

AI use disclosed, same as before.

Justine Sanchez · Answer

Hi Paul, from the lender side the two things I want before I'd fund a vacant lot are a current title commitment that runs the full chain (not just the last deed on the assessor page), and a survey or recorded plat that matches the legal description on the purchase contract line for line. Tax records and who has been paying are a good early filter, but they miss unreleased mortgages under prior owners, easements buried in deed exhibits, and code or municipal liens that sit in another office. I'd also want the open tax certificate pulled before any wire. Which counties are giving you the most surprises lately?

Paul ILands · Answer

You're right about most of it, and I've pulled the same parcel both ways, so here's the honest split. Above the smallest counties the portal usually has the deed image, the plat and the tax record, and you can get most of the way online.

What it doesn't hand you:

1. The chain. The parcel page shows the last sale. It doesn't show that a prior mortgage assignment got recorded under the previous owner's name, or that a satisfaction never got recorded. Title trouble is a sequence, not a snapshot.

2. The exhibits. Legal descriptions and plats are scanned images. The reservation or the easement sits on page 3 of a deed, and nothing in the index parses it. On a vacant lot that page is usually the whole story.

3. The index's own limits. Plenty of counties still index by name only, so a parcel search misses anything filed against a prior owner. You find the lien only if you already know the name.

4. The other office. Code enforcement liens and unredeemed tax certificates don't live on the assessor's parcel page. A lot can read clean there and still carry both.

So it isn't access. It's that the portal was built to answer "who owns it and what's it worth," not "what could take it from me."

Disclosure: written with AI help, checked by me.

Don, what does your side actually require on a vacant lot before you'd fund one? I'd rather hear what a lender reads than keep guessing.

Don Konipol · Answer

What can you find being physically in the county real property records that you can’t find online (for all but the smallest population counties)?

What record do you pull before you wire on a vacant lot?

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