The Public Record of a House and How to Read It
Why this matters
The house in front of you has a paper trail: when it was built, what was added, which work was permitted, who holds a right to cross the back yard, and whether a federal map puts it in a flood zone. Most of that trail is public and free, and most of it can be read from the office before anyone drives out. The shop that reads it quotes the addition's wiring as a question instead of a surprise, finds the easement before the pad is poured, and knows the flood zone before the customer's insurer does. The shop that does not finds out from the inspector.
Every record below answers one question well and goes wrong in a predictable way. The steps say both.
Before you start
Use the record for the property, not the people. You need the parcel, the structures, the permits and the encumbrances. You do not need the owner's purchase price, mortgage or history beyond what the job requires, and nothing you pull goes into a file the customer would be surprised to see.
Start from the parcel number (also called the APN or PIN), not the street address. Addresses get renumbered, split and duplicated; the parcel number is the key every office indexes on. The assessor's search page will give it to you from the address.
Step 1: Read the assessor's record
The county or township assessor keeps a record of every taxable parcel. It is built for valuing the property, not for describing its construction, and that shapes both what it gets right and what it gets wrong.
A typical record, trimmed to the fields a field-service shop uses:
PARCEL 14-22-305-011 CLASS: R1 SINGLE FAMILY
SITE: 418 ORCHARD LN LAND: 0.31 AC
YEAR BUILT ....... 1958 EFFECTIVE YEAR ..... 1994
STORIES .......... 1.0 STYLE ........... RANCH
LIVING AREA ...... 1,840 BASEMENT ........ 1,120
FIN BSMT ............ 0
HEAT ............. FWA FUEL ............... GAS
AC ............... CENTRAL BATHS ............ 2.0
ADDITIONS:
1 STY FRAME ADD ... 360 SF ... 1987
ENCL PORCH ........ 120 SF ... 2009
OUTBUILDINGS:
DET GARAGE ........ 480 SF ... 1958
SALES / PERMITS: SEE RECORDER / BLDG DEPT
What to take from it. The original build year tells you what the house was built with: wiring method, plumbing material, insulation, and whether lead paint rules apply to disturbing it (pre-1978 for the federal renovation rule). The additions list, with dates, tells you where the house changes construction partway across. The heating and fuel fields are a hint about what serves the house now.
Effective year is not a construction date. It is the assessor's estimate of how old the house acts after updates, used to depreciate it. An effective year of 1994 on a 1958 house means somebody judged it substantially updated, which might be a new kitchen, siding and roof, or might be a desk estimate after a sale. It is a reason to look for permits, not evidence of any.
Why it can be wrong. Living area is measured by the assessor's convention, which may exclude finished basements, measure exterior walls, or carry an old sketch forward for decades. Additions done without a permit often never reach the record at all, or appear years late after a reassessment. The heating fields are rarely updated when equipment changes. Skip this step and you lose the dates that anchor every other record.
Step 2: Pull the permit history
The building department (city, county or township, whichever has jurisdiction over the parcel) keeps permits. Many have an online portal searchable by address or parcel; older ones need a records request.
What to look for. Match each addition and major system to a permit. In the record above, a 1987 addition and a 2009 porch should each have a building permit with electrical and, for the addition, mechanical work. A 1994 effective year suggests looking for permits around then: roof, service upgrade, windows.
Why it can be wrong. Online portals often begin wherever the department digitized, commonly somewhere in the 1990s or 2000s; an empty portal for 1987 means "not online", not "no permit". Permits get closed without a final inspection, or left open for years, and an open permit can follow the property. Work done by an owner in a jurisdiction that allowed owner permits may show the permit with no contractor. See related: How to Pull a Permit History Before You Trust the House, and How to Research a House Built Before Online Records, for the request process and what to do when the portal runs out.
Skip this step and you treat unpermitted work as if it was inspected.
Step 3: Search the recorder for easements and restrictions
The county recorder (also called the register of deeds or county clerk, depending on the state) holds recorded documents: deeds, recorded plats, easements, covenants and restrictions, and liens. You want the ones that limit where work can go.
What to look for. Easements (a recorded right for someone else to use part of the lot: a utility line, a drainage swale, a shared driveway), the recorded plat for the subdivision, and any covenants, conditions and restrictions (often abbreviated CC&Rs) that govern equipment placement, fences, or outbuildings. A plat often shows utility and drainage easements along lot lines as dashed strips with a width.
Why it can be wrong. An easement can be granted in a document indexed under the owner's name decades ago and never shown on a plat. Some easements arise without any recorded document at all, from long use or necessity, and those never appear in this search. Recorder indexes in some counties are only digitized back to a certain year. A title report from the owner's purchase, if they have it, is often the best single summary of recorded encumbrances; ask for it on a large job. See related: Property Lines, Easements and Where Equipment Can Go, and How to Read a Plat and a Survey.
Skip this step and you pour a pad or set a generator inside a strip someone else has the right to dig up.
Step 4: Read the GIS parcel map
Most counties publish a GIS (geographic information system) viewer with parcel outlines over aerial photos, often with layers for zoning, utilities, soils, flood zones and the jurisdiction boundary.
What to look for. Which jurisdiction the parcel is in (city limits often differ from the mailing address), the zoning district (which sets setbacks for equipment and outbuildings), and a rough sense of where structures sit relative to the lines.
Why it can be wrong. GIS parcel lines are drawn from deed descriptions and fitted to photos; they are commonly off by several feet and sometimes by much more. They are good for "which side of the creek" and bad for "is the condenser 5 feet from the line". Only a survey answers a setback question. Skip this step and you file the permit with the wrong department or design to the wrong zoning.
Step 5: Check the FEMA flood map
FEMA's Flood Map Service Center publishes the Flood Insurance Rate Maps (FIRMs) that show Special Flood Hazard Areas, the zones with a 1 percent annual chance of flooding (zones beginning with A, or V on the coast). Search by address and read the zone at the structure, not at the street.
What to look for. The zone designation, the base flood elevation (BFE) where one is printed, the map panel's effective date, and any Letter of Map Amendment or Revision (LOMA or LOMR) listed for the property, which can remove or change the designation.
Why it can be wrong. Maps are revised on long cycles, so a panel can predate development upstream. Zone X (moderate or minimal hazard) does not mean no flood risk; many flood claims come from outside mapped high-risk zones. A LOMA can take a structure out of the zone while the map still shows it in. Communities also adopt their own floodplain rules on top of the federal map, which is the layer that decides what your equipment install must do. See related: How to Check a Flood Zone Before Quoting, and How to Read an Elevation Certificate.
Step 6: Reconcile and write it down
Lay the records side by side and look for disagreements. Disagreements are the finding.
Worked through, using the record above. A shop is quoting a heat pump and a panel replacement on 418 Orchard Ln.
- Assessor: built 1958, 360 sq ft frame addition in 1987, porch enclosed 2009, forced warm air on gas, central AC.
- Permits: the portal begins in 1998. It shows a 2009 porch permit, finaled, and a 2011 water heater permit. Nothing for 1987, which the portal cannot answer. A records request returns a 1987 building permit for the addition, finaled, with no separate electrical permit.
- Recorder: the subdivision plat shows a 7.5 foot utility and drainage easement along the rear line. No covenants govern equipment.
- GIS: the parcel is inside city limits, zoned single family, with a 5 foot side setback for accessory equipment under the city's zoning code.
- FEMA: Zone X on the effective panel.
What the reconciliation produces for the quote:
- The 1987 addition has no electrical permit on file. That does not prove the wiring was done without one; some departments bundled trades under the building permit then. It does mean the addition's circuits get looked at on the walkthrough before the panel scope is fixed, and the proposal says the addition's branch circuits are inspected and priced separately if they need work.
- The house is pre-1978. Any work that disturbs painted surfaces beyond the federal rule's minor-repair thresholds falls under lead-safe work practices (40 CFR 745, Subpart E, or your state's authorized program). The new panel location needs that question answered before the quote.
- The easement is at the rear. The heat pump goes on the side, at least 5 feet from the line by the zoning rule. GIS cannot confirm 5 feet, so the crew measures from a found corner marker or the shop asks the owner for their survey.
- Zone X. No floodplain permit. The record notes the map panel's effective date so the next quote rechecks it.
The record lands in the job notes with a source on every line ("Permit 1987-0412, finaled, building only, per records request"), so the next person to quote this house does not repeat the research or trust a fact without seeing where it came from.
How to verify you read it right
- Every fact has a source and a date. A fact with no source is one you will repeat to a customer without being able to back it up.
- Every disagreement between records is either resolved or carried into the proposal as a named question. The unpermitted-looking addition, the GIS line that does not match the fence, the porch the assessor lists that the permit calls a deck.
- Nothing was treated as more precise than it is. GIS lines and assessor areas are approximations. Setback distances come from a survey or a measurement from a marker.
This is not legal advice. Where a record raises a question about who owns or controls part of the lot, or whether an open permit or recorded restriction binds the work, the owner's title company or attorney answers it, and the shop walks in with the parcel number and copies of the documents found.
References
- FEMA Flood Map Service Center (msc.fema.gov) and the National Flood Insurance Program's flood zone definitions
- EPA Renovation, Repair and Painting Rule, 40 CFR Part 745 Subpart E, or your state's authorized program
- Your county assessor, recorder and building department, and the GIS viewer for the parcel
- See related: Reading the Place Before the Quote; How to Pull a Permit History Before You Trust the House; How to Read a Plat and a Survey