How to Search the Grantor/Grantee Index for Your Property

By Mo Ayadi, Founder of Title Barrier | Published September 4, 2026

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A grantor/grantee index search is how you look up every recorded document tied to your name in the county land records. The grantor is the party giving something away — a seller, or a borrower pledging the property as collateral. The grantee is the party receiving it — a buyer, or a lender. Every deed, mortgage, lien, and release is indexed under both names. Search yourself in both roles and you see what has been recorded against your property, including anything you never signed.

Most owners have never done this. They assume the county would tell them if a deed showed up in their name. It won't. Recorders index documents; they do not verify signatures. That gap is where deed fraud lives. The FBI and ALTA reported 58,141 victims and $1.3 billion in real estate fraud losses from 2019 through 2023, and a forged deed often sits in the index for months before anyone looks.

This post walks through the search itself: where to go, what to type, why name variations trip people up, and what a surprise instrument actually looks like when it appears.

Disclosure: I run Title Barrier, a property fraud prevention company. I have a commercial interest in this topic. Factual claims are sourced so you can check them.

What the index is, and what it isn't

Every county has an office that records land documents. Depending on the state it is called the recorder, register of deeds, or county clerk. When a document is recorded, staff stamp it with an instrument number (or book and page), scan it, and index it by the names of the parties.

That name index is the grantor/grantee index. It is a finding aid, not a judgment. The clerk does not check that the grantor actually signed, that the notary was real, or that the grantee exists. If a document meets the state's form requirements, it gets recorded and indexed.

Some states also maintain a tract index organized by parcel or legal description rather than by name. Where one exists, use both. The name index is the one that catches a document recorded under a spelling of your name you didn't expect; the tract index catches one recorded under a name you'd never think to search.

For background on how deeds and title differ, see Deed vs. Title.

Where to run the search

Go to the website of the county where the property sits — not the county where you live, if those differ. Look for links labeled official records, land records, recorded documents, or document search. Some counties host this themselves; others route through a vendor portal. Either way, the index search is almost always free. Viewing or printing the full document image sometimes costs a few dollars per page.

If you own property in more than one county, repeat the process in each. Indexes do not cross county lines.

Search as grantee first, then as grantor

Start with yourself as grantee. Type your last name and first name as they appear on your purchase deed. You should see that deed, dated roughly when you closed, with the right parcel or legal description. This confirms you're searching the right spelling in the right county.

Now switch to grantor and run the same name. This is the search that matters. Every result dated after your purchase should be something you recognize:

• A mortgage or deed of trust you signed at closing or on a refinance
• A release or satisfaction when you paid a loan off (you may appear as grantee on that one, depending on the county)
• An easement, boundary agreement, or affidavit you knowingly executed
• A deed into your own trust or LLC

Anything else is worth opening.

Names: the part that goes wrong

Name indexing is where honest owners miss things and fraudsters hide things. Counties index a document exactly as the name is typed on it. If your deed says Robert J. Alvarez and a forged deed says Bob Alvarez or Robert Alvarez Jr., a search for the exact original string may not return it.

Run each of these:

• Last name, first name, no middle initial
• With the middle initial, and with the full middle name
• Maiden, hyphenated, or former names for any owner
• Every co-owner separately, not just the first name on the deed
• The exact name of any trust ("Alvarez Family Trust" and "Alvarez Family Revocable Trust" are different index entries)
• The exact name of any LLC, including punctuation and "LLC" versus "L.L.C."

Many portals support wildcard or partial-name searches. If yours does, search on last name alone and scroll the results by date. That is slower but catches the misspellings a fraudster may have used on purpose. Property held in an entity deserves particular care — see Should I Put My Property in an LLC? for why entity-held title is a common target.

Reading the results

Each index line gives you the same handful of fields. Here is what to check in each.

Open the document image for anything you can't place. The index line alone won't show you the signature or the notary block.

What a surprise instrument looks like

The most common forged instrument is a quitclaim deed. It is short, has no warranty language, and can be drafted in minutes from a free form. In the index it reads: Grantor: [your name]. Grantee: [stranger or LLC]. Type: Quitclaim Deed. Open it and you'll typically find a signature that resembles yours but isn't, a notary acknowledgment from a notary you never met (sometimes in another state, sometimes via remote online notarization), and a return address for the grantee.

Other entries that should stop you cold:

• A deed of trust or mortgage naming a lender you never borrowed from. Fraudsters who can't sell the property fast enough will borrow against it instead.
• A power of attorney recorded in your name, granting someone authority to convey the property. This is frequently the setup document recorded a few weeks before the deed.
• An affidavit of heirship or death certificate filed against a living owner, used to reroute title through a fake estate.
• A lis pendens signaling litigation about the property that you were never served in.

The NAR 2025 Deed & Title Fraud Survey found 62% of title fraud cases involved vacant land and 12% involved owner-occupied homes. If you hold land, a rental, a free-and-clear property, or a second home you visit seasonally, the grantor search is not optional. I wrote about why in How to Protect Vacant Land from Fraud.

For what a real one looked like in practice, see Sold Without Their Knowledge: New Jersey.

How often to check, and the free option

There is no fixed rule. A quarterly search takes ten minutes for an owner-occupied home. Higher-risk property warrants monthly, or better, automation.

Many counties now run a free property fraud alert: you register your name (and variations) and the recorder emails you when a document is indexed under it. In its August 2024 consumer alert, the FTC told consumers to check for these free county programs before paying for commercial title monitoring. I agree with the FTC on that. If your county offers one, enroll in it today. Register every spelling and every entity name, because the alert is only as good as the strings you gave it.

The limit of any alert, free or paid, is that it fires after recording. You learn the deed exists; you do not stop it. Detection still matters — a forged deed caught in week one is unwound very differently than one caught after the property has been flipped to a third buyer and mortgaged.

What to do if you find something

If a document you didn't sign appears in the index:

1. Save everything. Download the index entry and the full document image. Note the instrument number.
2. Call the recorder's office. Ask whether they have a fraud flag or a procedure for disputed recordings. They cannot remove the document, but some will annotate the record.
3. Do not contact the grantee. You are dealing with someone who has already committed a felony. Let law enforcement make first contact.
4. File a police report in the county where the property sits, and file with the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center at ic3.gov.
5. Notify your title insurer if you bought an owner's policy at closing. Coverage for post-policy forgery is limited under the standard ALTA Owner's Policy (Exclusion 3(d)), but the insurer needs notice regardless. The ALTA 49 endorsement changes this picture for newer policies in some states.
6. Talk to a real estate attorney in your state. The usual remedy is a quiet title action. Uncontested cases typically run $1,500–$5,000 and 3–6 months; contested cases often reach $8,000–$12,000 or more and can take over a year. Details in Quiet Title Action: Cost, Timeline, and Process.

Also search the grantee's name as a grantor. If they have already conveyed the property onward, you need to know now.

Where a recorded notice fits

Searching the index is detection. Prevention means making it harder for a forged deed to turn into a completed sale or loan in the first place.

Title Barrier files a notice in the county land records. It does not pay claims and it does not stop a clerk from recording a document. It makes the property harder to move through a legitimate title search without contacting the owner. When a title company, lender, or closing attorney pulls the chain of title, the notice is in the index alongside everything else, and it instructs them to verify with the owner before proceeding. The cost is $199 one-time setup plus $199 per year per property; setup covers document preparation, notarization, and recording. Details are at /pricing.

If you want a read on how exposed your specific property is before deciding anything, the free report at /risk-report walks through the risk factors — vacancy, absentee ownership, equity, entity ownership — that show up disproportionately in the fraud data.

Either way, run the grantor search this week. It's free, it takes ten minutes, and most owners who do it for the first time are surprised by how much is sitting in the record under their name — even when all of it turns out to be legitimate.

This article is educational and is not legal advice. Recording procedures and remedies vary by state and county. Consult a real estate attorney licensed in your state about your situation. Information current as of September 4, 2026.

Sources

1. FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) — https://www.ic3.gov/
2. American Land Title Association (ALTA) — https://www.alta.org/
3. Federal Trade Commission, Consumer Alerts — https://consumer.ftc.gov/consumer-alerts
4. National Association of Realtors, Research & Statistics (2025 Deed & Title Fraud Survey) — https://www.nar.realtor/research-and-statistics
5. CertifID, real estate fraud research — https://www.certifid.com/

See also: How to Verify Property Ownership: A Step-by-Step Guide · 7 Warning Signs of Home Title Theft · Quitclaim Deed: Why It's the Most Commonly Forged Property Document · What Happens If Someone Forges a Deed on Your Property?