Start with the county tax roll. It gives you the owner of record and a parcel number. Take those to that county's probate office and search its records for the deed that put the land in that owner's name. Read it for five things: who conveyed it, what land it describes, what was held back, what it points to, and the deed tax stamp. A title search still comes before closing.
The Tax Roll Gives You a Name, and the Deed Gives You the Facts
Say you found a tract on LandScout, or a For Sale sign on a fence with no name on it. Either way, the county tax roll will give you a name.
That name is the owner of record, the person or company the county's tax roll lists for the parcel. LandScout's parcel view shows it, along with the mailing address the county publishes and the parcel number. In Shelby County, the same record sits on the Property Tax Commissioner's property search.
The tax roll follows the deed. The Alabama Department of Revenue says tax maps "are for tax purposes only and cannot be used for conveyance." It adds that map changes "usually result from deeds being assessed in the Appraisal Department and/or recorded in the Probate Office" (ADOR, what is a tax map). So a sale recorded last month may not show on the tax record yet.
We'd rather pull the record than guess at it. It's public. It's just not in one place.
Search the Probate Records by Name, Book and Page, or Instrument
Alabama deeds are recorded with the judge of probate. Section 35-4-50 says conveyances required to be recorded "must be recorded in the office of the judge of probate." Each county keeps its own, so search the county where the land sits.
Shelby County's Probate Court page says deeds from 1819 to the present can be viewed online. The search is the recording room records search. Its form takes a name, a book and page, an instrument number, a document type, a lot and block, or a section, township, and range.
Start with the shortcut. Shelby's parcel record may list a reference to the last transfer, such as an instrument number or a deed book and page. If it does, enter that in the matching field and the deed comes up. If it doesn't, search the owner of record's name with the document type set to deeds. Find the newest deed where that owner received the land.
Then run the name again with no document type. That shows everything recorded under it: mortgages, easements, liens, and any later deed that sold off a piece. Write down every book and page.
Among the Shelby County parcels LandScout scores with a transfer date on file, 20.9 percent last changed hands over twenty years ago, per the Shelby County numbers. On those tracts, expect more recorded under the owner's name since the last deed.
Who Signed It Over, and Who Holds It Now?
The deed names a grantor, who conveyed the land, and a grantee, who received it. The grantee should match the owner of record. If it matches, the tax-roll mailing address is the place to send a letter.
If it doesn't match, find out why before you write anyone. Many reasons are ordinary. A spouse may share the deed while one name sits on the tax bill. The owner could be a family trust or an LLC. Or the owner has died and the land is passing through an estate. Each one changes who can sign a sale, and that's a question for a real estate attorney or a title company.
Note the kind of deed, too. A warranty deed carries the grantor's promises about the title. A quitclaim deed passes whatever interest the grantor had, with no promises attached. Shelby's index lists quitclaim deeds as their own type. A run of them in the history is worth a question to the title company.
Does the Legal Description Match the Plat and the Ground?
The legal description is the paragraph that says what land the deed conveys. In Alabama it usually takes one of two forms.
The first is a lot and block in a named subdivision, with the book and page of the recorded plat. Pull that plat and check the lot number. One wrong digit describes the neighbor's lot. Reading a recorded plat covers what that sheet shows.
The second is metes and bounds. It starts at a point tied to the government survey (a section, township, and range) and walks the boundary one call at a time. Each call is a direction and a distance. Read it with the county map open. If the calls trace a long, narrow strip and the tax map shows a square, something is off.
Check the acreage line. Many deeds say "10 acres, more or less," and the phrase is a warning that the number is approximate. A surveyor is the one who finds where those calls land on the ground. Our survey note covers when you'll want one.
What Did Somebody Keep, and What Does the Deed Point To?
A deed can convey less than the whole. Read slowly for three phrases.
- "Less and except." This carves a piece out. It might be an acre a parent kept for a house, or a strip deeded to the county for the road.
- "Reserving." The grantor, or someone earlier in the chain, may have kept the minerals, the timber, or a strip along one line for a driveway. A mineral reservation can sit several deeds back. Shelby's records index mineral deeds and mineral leases as their own document types, so search past owners' names for them.
- "Subject to." This lists what rides along with the land, such as easements, rights-of-way, and restrictive covenants. Many give a book and page. Pull each one and read it.
Alabama law treats those recorded papers as known to you. Section 35-4-51 says that when deeds, mortgages, and similar instruments are filed for registration, their filing "shall constitute notice of their contents." An easement recorded across the tract binds the next owner, as the note on what an easement on a tract means for you explains. Recorded covenants can limit what you build, which is covered in can I build what I want on this tract.
The Deed Tax Stamp Hints at the Price, With Three Catches
Alabama is not a non-disclosure state. Under Section 40-22-1, a deed sent for recording must come with "proof of the actual purchase price paid for the property," or its value if it wasn't sold. The Department of Revenue's recordation tax page lists the deed rate as $0.50 per $500 of value.
The same section says the probate judge "shall certify thereon the fact that the tax has been paid, showing the amount of the tax." That certificate is recorded as part of the deed. Find it, and multiply the tax by 1,000. A $40 deed tax points to roughly $40,000.
- Financing shrinks it. Only the value above a mortgage on which the mortgage tax was paid is taxed. A financed purchase can show a tax far below the price.
- A value can stand in for a price. When land wasn't sold, the filer proves its value instead. If no proof is given at all, the tax runs on the value the county set in its most recent assessment.
- Some deeds owe none. A deed made for a nominal sum to fix a title is exempt.
Prices are recorded with the deed, but there is no searchable public database of them. You find them one deed at a time. And the county's appraised value is a separate figure, never a sale price, as why the county says $6,000 an acre explains.
What the Deed Can't Tell You, and Who Checks It
A deed is one document, as of one day. It can't show anything recorded after it, or anything never recorded at all. That includes:
- a mortgage the owner signed after buying
- a judgment, tax lien, or mechanic's lien against the owner
- a later deed selling off part of the land
- a handshake road, a lease, or another deal nobody wrote down
Recording is what makes a deed count against later buyers. Section 35-4-90 says unrecorded conveyances are "inoperative and void as to purchasers for a valuable consideration, mortgagees, and judgment creditors without notice." How that plays out on a given tract is a legal question for an attorney.
The online index has limits too. Shelby's search disclaimer says "some older Cancellations of Mortgage are not recorded as electronic images." It says thorough title searches should be done in the records room in Columbiana. So a mortgage can show up online without the release that paid it off.
That's why the step before closing belongs to a professional. Once you have a signed contract, hire a real estate attorney or a title company to run a title search. They trace the chain of deeds back and check for liens and judgments. Ask about an owner's title insurance policy, which can cover losses from certain title problems the search missed. The policy spells out which ones.
A LandScout plan puts the owner of record, the parcel number, and the screening data in one place, and the pricing page lists what each plan includes.
Read the deed yourself before you make an offer, and pay a professional to read everything around it before you close.