Searching Collin County Property Records

Collin County runs north from the Dallas line through Plano, Frisco, McKinney, Allen and Wylie, and it has been among the fastest growing counties in the country for most of two decades. That growth is the context for everything in its land record. Parcels are subdivided, replatted and annexed constantly, and a legal description written ten years ago may describe ground that has since been cut into forty lots.

Texas also handles two things differently from most states, and both change what a search can tell you.

One filing series at the county clerk

The county clerk maintains the Official Public Records, a single series carrying deeds, deeds of trust, releases, assignments, liens, plats, powers of attorney and judgment abstracts together, indexed by grantor and grantee name.

Texas secures loans with a deed of trust rather than a mortgage, and forecloses outside court under a power of sale. Sales are held on the first Tuesday of the month at a place the commissioners court has designated, following a notice period, and what reaches the record afterward is a substitute trustee's deed rather than a court judgment. The notice itself is posted and mailed rather than recorded, so a foreclosure leaves a thinner trail here than it would in a judicial state.

Land in Texas is described by reference to an original survey with an abstract number, or by lot and block in a recorded subdivision plat. There is no township and range grid, and the older descriptions can be long.

Two things the deed will not tell you

The first is the price. Texas is a non disclosure state, so a deed recites consideration in a formula rather than a figure, usually ten dollars and other good and valuable consideration. Nothing in the public record shows what a property sold for, which surprises people who expect a sale price the way they would find one in most states.

The second is more consequential. Texas homestead protection is written into the state constitution and it is unusually strong. A lien against a family homestead is enforceable only if it falls within a list the constitution sets out, and many of those require the signatures of both spouses whether or not both are on the deed. Mechanics liens on a homestead carry their own requirements, including a written contract signed before work begins.

A lien that does not meet those requirements can be void rather than merely defective. Whether a particular one qualifies is a legal question for Texas counsel, and it is the reason a homestead designation on the appraisal roll is worth noting in a search even though the roll is not title.

Districts levy on top of the tax bill

Growth corridors in Collin and the counties beside it are heavily served by municipal utility districts and public improvement districts, which finance water, sewer and roads for new subdivisions and recover the cost through assessments collected with the property tax bill.

These are easy to overlook because they do not appear as a recorded lien against an individual lot. The district is created by an order and its boundaries are recorded, and the assessment arrives on a tax statement. Texas requires a seller to give a buyer written notice of a district assessment, which is a disclosure obligation rather than a recording, so the document lives in the transaction file rather than at the county.

What to send us

The address and the legal description from a prior deed, since descriptions here change as land is replatted. The subdivision name and the lot and block if the property sits in one. The full name of every owner in the period you care about, including any trust or entity name. And say whether the property is a homestead, because it changes what is worth examining.

What a Collin County search establishes

A search reports what was recorded and found in the indexes reviewed over the term searched, in the county where the property sits. It is not an inventory of everything affecting a property, an empty result does not prove a parcel is unencumbered, and recording and indexing practice varies from one Texas county to the next. Whether a lien is valid against a homestead, whether a foreclosure was properly noticed, and whether title is good today are conclusions for an attorney licensed in Texas.