How can I find out who a derilict house belongs to?

Question

I desperately need to move house as our family is getting bigger. I recently saw a beautiful derilict house near to where I live that I would love to move into, how can I find out who owns it?

Answer 1

You can go to the city or county offices and request information by the address. They will tell you who owns it and any public information.

Answer 2

The easiest way to find out who the owner of record is, if you have the address, is to call a title company and ask them for a property profile on the property. Sometimes they won't be willing to help you unless you go through a realtor so ask a realtor to order you one and have them forward it to your email address.  This will also give you an address of where the owner lives and sometimes their home phone number so that you can write or call them.  Another way is to go

to the county recorder and look through the tax rolls under the address. If there is no address on the property give the agent or title officer the closest address you can find to it along with

the street name, cross street and in what direction from the target property the address you are giving them sits. What you are looking for is an assessors parcel number on the property which is all you need to have to find out anything you want to know about it.  It sounds like this could be a property that may be in foreclosure. if so the title information should tell you which lender to contact. Or it may be abandoned for non payment of property taxes.  If the latter is the case you may be able to buy it for payment of back property taxes which could be a real steal. Your property profile will tell you if that is the case,and the amount of back taxes owed.  If you find that there is a tax lien on it, you can go on the internet and look up tax lien auctions for the county in which the property sits.  It will give you all the information you need on how to go about bidding on th property. Good Luck!

Answer 3

If you are in the UK you need to go to the Council where the property is situated.  It is a statutory requirement that they have an empty homes Officer who should know who owns the property.  If you tell them you wish to contact the owner with a view to buying they will usually tell you who owns it. If they are being a bit 'data protection jobsworth' they will take your details and pass them on.

Answer 4

you can search the web for property tax for your county and there should be information on how to find out who gets taxed (i.e. the owner).  it's public record.

Answer 5

If you are in the UK you will probably come up against data protection restrictions from utility companies and the local council, or alternately the council may already have the building on their empty property register in which case they would presumably be helpful about your putting it back into use.

The land registry may be able to help, but just doing a Google search about buying derelict properties and locating owners of, comes up with useful starting points, there's some hints here about how to find out about ownership:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/homes/property/buyi...

You can also ask neighbours, or just try dropping a letter through the door of the house to see if anyone is still popping-in (depends how derelict it is).

Btw, with this sort of question it is always worth stating what country you are in, so that you do not get answers from people in other countries, mainly the USA, where there are different procedures and laws.

Good luck anyway.

Answer 6

there are various ways to check this out, but a simple way might be to go to the city water department and find out who the bill is being sent to.  Once you have a name, go to the County Offices and ask about any property owned by this person.  They will probably give you a print out with name and last known address.