How to Find Free Property Tax Records

Free property tax records are surprisingly easy to find. If you know where and how to look you can get free property tax records on any property you like, usually from the comfort of your own home. Here's how...

Instructions

1. 

   Find your county auditor's website. Your county auditor is the one who handles all the property tax records. Many county auditors now have websites with publicly searchable information. This is a great place to find free property tax records since it is from the source.

2. Alternatively use the county assessor's website. If your auditor is behind the times, usually your assessor is more ahead of the game. You can search by property address, property owner's name, or even search for a particular street and look at each property tax record in turn.

3. Play around with the search engine on the county site. Sometimes you will be required to use all caps. On other sites you have to leave out all punctuation and abbreviations. Fiddle with it until you get the hang of it.

4. 

   If you cannot find the county auditor and or assessor's website, you can always call the county office to get it. In your local phonebook look up county offices or the municipal building. When you call speak confidently, and ask for what you need. You can get free property tax records since these are all publicly available and it is the auditor's office job to get them to you. If all else fails, go in person and ask to see the records on a particular property you are researching.

   * See more tips on finding free property tax records below.

Tips & Warnings

• If you are a home owner you should periodically check your own property tax records online to be sure they are in line. The author of this article recently walked a friend through this process only to find out there were faulty tax liens on the property and the property was still listed in another's name. Bringing this to the attention of the authorities saved thousands of dollars.

• Be sure you have applied for homestead property tax deductions if applicable in your state.

• You can also get onto regional MLS sites to see properties that are sale below value to get the property addresses you may want to research.

• See more tips on free property tax information above in related articles.

Resources

• When to Refinance Rule of Thumb
• Pay Your Mortgage Writing Online Articles
• Save on Your Monthly Grocery Bill
• How to Claim Common Tax Credits