How to Do a Title Search Yourself: 6 Free Steps (2026)

A title search is a review of every recorded document that affects a property, run through the county recorder's grantor-grantee index, to establish who holds title and what claims sit against it. You can do one yourself for free at the county. What you cannot do yourself is insure the result, which is why closings still run through a title company.

I run a rough title search on every lead before I mail it, not to close on it, but to find out whether the owner can actually sell. A house with three deeds of trust, a lis pendens, and a code enforcement lien is a different conversation from a house that has been free and clear since 1994. The county tells you which one you are looking at in about an hour.

This is the recorder lookup inside our public records guide for real estate. Below is the order I run it in, with the three Puget Sound counties as the worked example, and an honest line on where the do-it-yourself version stops.

DIY search vs a title company

The two are not competitors. The title company's product is the insurance, and the search is how they underwrite it. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's explainer on owner's title insurance is the short version of what that policy covers. For a lead you have not offered on yet, you want the search and not the policy.

Step 1: Pull the parcel number and legal description

The recorder's index is built on names and legal descriptions, not street addresses. So the first stop is the assessor, where the address resolves to a parcel number and a legal description ("Lot 4, Block 12, Ballard Addition"). The assessor page also gives you the current owner of record and their mailing address, which is the same lookup as finding a property owner by address.

Copy the owner name exactly as the assessor spells it. "Smith, John A" and "John A. Smith" hit the same index, but a company name with a dropped comma will not.

Step 2: Search the grantor-grantee index

Every county recorder keeps two indexes of the same documents. Washington's RCW 65.04.050 spells out the columns: a direct index listing "grantor, grantee, nature of instrument," and an inverted index with the names reversed, so any document can be found from either party. Most counties now merge the two into one search box, but the logic still runs both directions.

• Grantor is the party giving something up: the seller on a deed, the borrower on a deed of trust, the property owner on a lien.
• Grantee is the party receiving it: the buyer, the lender, the lienholder.

Search the current owner as grantee first. That returns the deed that gave them title, which is the top of your chain. Then search the same name as grantor. That returns everything they have signed since: the deed of trust for their mortgage, a second loan, an easement to the neighbor, a lien someone filed against them.

Where to run it in my counties:

Each result gives you the recording number, the document type, both parties, and the image. Open the image. The index tells you a deed exists; the document tells you what it says.

Step 3: Walk the chain of title backward

Take the deed from Step 2 and read the grantor. That person should appear as the grantee on an earlier deed. Search them, find it, read that deed's grantor, repeat. Each link is one owner. Stop when the chain is unbroken for as far back as you care about, which for a lead vet is the last two or three owners and for a real closing is 30 to 60 years.

The finding is any place the chain breaks. The grantor on a 2014 deed never took title on any recorded document. A 2019 deed conveys from an estate but there is no probate and no personal representative's deed. Two deeds for the same lot in the same month. Any of those is a title defect, and a title defect is the reason an owner cannot sell, which for an investor is the reason they might sell cheap.

While you read, note the instrument type on each deed. It tells you how the property changed hands, and that turns out to correlate with condition. I joined the last two years of recorded Seattle sales to our code violation database:

Source: King County Assessor sales records for Seattle joined to the FlaggedLeads code violation database by normalized address, 37,082 sales recorded June 2024 through September 2026. Co-occurrence only, not a probability of anything.

Read the bottom three rows. A trustee's deed is a foreclosure. A bargain and sale deed or a special warranty deed is usually a bank, an estate, or an entity that will not warrant the title past its own ownership. Those properties carry a code violation at roughly twice the rate of a plain warranty-deed sale. The difference between a quitclaim and a warranty deed does not predict distress; how the last seller got the house does.

Step 4: List every open encumbrance

An encumbrance is any recorded claim that rides with the property: a deed of trust, a lien, an easement, a covenant, a pending lawsuit. The chain from Step 3 gives you the deeds. Now go back through the grantor searches and pull everything that is not a deed.

For each deed of trust, look for a matching reconveyance (or satisfaction, or release) recorded later. No reconveyance means the loan is still open as far as the record shows, even if the owner swears it was paid off in 2011. For each lien, look for a release. For a lis pendens, look for a dismissal. For a notice of trustee's sale, look for a notice of discontinuance.

What is left is the list a buyer has to clear at closing. The full walk through the lien types, including the ones that never hit the recorder, is in how to find liens on a property. The one people miss most is the code enforcement lien, because the city runs the case for months or years before recording anything.

If the records reveal competing ownership claims, ask counsel whether a quiet title action is appropriate. A recorded release or corrective instrument may resolve a simpler problem; the next step depends on the defect.

Step 5: Check the treasurer and the excise tax affidavit

Two things a recorder search does not show.

Property taxes. The tax lien attaches by statute every January 1 and is never recorded, so the treasurer's portal is the only place to see delinquent years and the balance. Pull it by parcel number.

The real price. Washington deeds usually recite "ten dollars and other valuable consideration." The actual figure is on the real estate excise tax affidavit, which the state Department of Revenue requires on every transfer and which the county keeps with the deed. The Department of Revenue's REET page explains the affidavit. Reading it is how you learn what the current owner paid, which is the number your offer has to make sense against.

Step 6: Read what the title search cannot see

Everything above lives at the county. The property's condition lives at the city, in the code enforcement system, the permit file, and the vacant-building registry, and none of it is recorded until it escalates to a lien. In Seattle, that is 10,816 addresses with an unclosed code case right now, and only a small fraction of those have anything on title.

That is the half of the record I built a tool around. Choose one metro and start a 14-day trial, with no card required. Run the county search for the paper, then read the city record for the property. The lead is in the gap between the two.

Why recording is the whole game

One statute explains why any of this works. Washington's RCW 65.08.070 says an unrecorded conveyance "is void as against any subsequent purchaser or mortgagee in good faith and for a valuable consideration" who records first, and that "an instrument is deemed recorded the minute it is filed for record." Every state has a version. The rule forces everyone with a claim on a property to put it in the public index, which is why the index is complete enough to search.

It also means the search is only as good as the index. A document misindexed under a misspelled name is legally recorded and practically invisible. That is the risk the title company insures and you cannot, and it is the whole reason the DIY search is for vetting and not for closing.

Frequently asked questions

Can I do a title search myself?

Yes. Every county recorder's index is public, most are searchable online, and the documents cost nothing to read. What you cannot do yourself is issue title insurance, so for a purchase or a loan you still order a professional search and a policy. For vetting a lead, the free search is enough.

How much does a title search cost?

Free at the county, apart from a few dollars per certified copy. A title company charges roughly $200 to $400 for a search alone, and an owner's policy on top of that is priced on the sale amount. Online "instant title search" sites are resellers of the same county index, usually on a lag.

What is the grantor-grantee index?

The recorder's master index of every recorded document, listed once under the party giving (grantor) and once under the party receiving (grantee). Washington's RCW 65.04.050 describes the direct and inverted versions. Searching a name in both directions finds every document that person has signed or received against real property in that county.

How far back should a title search go?

For a closing, title companies typically run the chain 30 to 60 years, or back to a prior insured policy. For vetting a lead, the last two or three owners tell you what you need: how the current owner took title, what they have borrowed against it, and whether anything is pending.

Does a title search show code violations?

Only after a violation becomes a recorded lien, which in most cities takes months or years and never happens on the majority of cases. An open code violation lives in the city's enforcement system. Choose one metro and start a 14-day trial, with no card required. Check the code violation record alongside the county title records.