Clear a Lien Off Your Property Title: Mechanic’s, Judgment, or Federal Tax

Order a current title report or search the county land records
1 hour 30 min
Start from your own picture of the record, not a stranger’s summary. Two routes: if a sale or refinance is underway, ask the title company handling the transaction for a current title report; otherwise search the land records yourself. Either way the target is identical — every open instrument against the parcel, each with its recording number, recording date, claimant and amount. The county recorder (also styled Recorder of Deeds, Clerk-Recorder or Register of Deeds) keeps that index; most counties offer a free online official-records search, and every one keeps a public counter.
If you order a report instead, ask the title officer for the full report with its schedule of exceptions, not a verbal list of items — you need the same five data points per lien either way.
- Open the official-records search on the website of the county recorder where the property sits — the office may be titled Recorder of Deeds, Clerk-Recorder, or Register of Deeds.
- Run a grantor-grantee search on the owners’ names exactly as printed on the vesting deed, then repeat the search by parcel number (APN) and by street address.
- Scan the hits chronologically; set aside deeds and mortgages and flag every other instrument — judgments, liens, lis pendens, tax notices.
- For each flagged entry, write down the recording or instrument number, recording date, claimant, and amount shown.
- Save or print the results screens — this is your baseline picture of the parcel.

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