Searching Hillsborough County Property Records

Hillsborough County is Tampa, Plant City and a fast growing ring of suburbs, and its property record is easier to search than most counties of its size. Florida puts land filings and court filings into one combined index, kept by a single office, which removes the split that causes so much trouble elsewhere.

That advantage is real, and it stops short of being the whole picture.

One office keeps the official records

The clerk of the circuit court maintains what Florida calls the Official Records, a single indexed series covering deeds, mortgages and satisfactions alongside judgments, lis pendens, construction liens, plats, easements and declarations. Instruments carry a book and page reference and an instrument number, and both are worth capturing.

The reason that combination matters is that in most states a judgment against an owner lives in a court index the land records never touch. In Florida it sits in the same series as the deed, which makes a name search substantially more informative in one pass.

What is not in it still has to be collected. The property appraiser holds parcel numbers, ownership as shown on the roll and the legal description used for assessment. The tax collector holds the tax position. Permits, open code enforcement cases and utility charges sit with the city or with the county, depending on where the property is, and Tampa, Temple Terrace and Plant City each run their own.

Homestead is a title question here

Florida's homestead provisions do more than reduce a tax bill. They restrict how homestead property may be conveyed or encumbered, and they restrict how it may be devised when there is a surviving spouse or a minor child.

The practical effect on a search is that the marital and family situation behind a deed can matter to whether the deed did what it appears to have done. A conveyance signed by one spouse alone, a devise of homestead property under a will, and a transfer into a trust are all places where the question arises. None of that is settled by the record, and all of it is a matter for Florida counsel. What the record supplies is the deed, the recitals in it and whatever else was filed around it.

Construction liens begin before they are filed

Florida's construction lien law works on a sequence rather than on a single filing, and it is the item most likely to make a clean search misleading.

A notice of commencement is recorded before work begins, naming the owner, the contractor and the improvement, and it has an expiry date. A claim of lien may be recorded much later, within deadlines running from the last work performed, and its priority can relate back to the notice rather than to the day it was filed.

So the thing to look for is an unexpired notice of commencement with no lien recorded against it yet. That is a window in which a claim can still appear and take a position ahead of instruments recorded in the meantime. On a recently renovated Tampa property it is worth checking every time.

Tax deeds and what they leave standing

Florida sells tax certificates on delinquent parcels and then, after a statutory period, allows the certificate holder to apply for a tax deed sale. A completed sale clears many private liens, which is what makes these attractive, and several categories survive it.

Easements, recorded covenants and restrictions, some municipal charges and certain governmental claims commonly remain. Notice to the parties entitled to it is also the usual ground on which a tax title is later attacked, which is why buyers so often end up in a quiet title action before they can sell or insure. Establishing who was entitled to notice is a chain of title exercise.

Ordering a Hillsborough County search

Supply the street address, the property appraiser's folio number and every name the property has been held in. Say whether the chain runs through an estate, a foreclosure or a tax deed, and whether any construction work has been done recently.

A title search reports what was recorded and indexed in the offices searched, as of the day the work was done. It is not proof that nothing else exists, it is not a title insurance commitment and it is not a legal opinion. Recording practice varies from one Florida county to the next, so our report names the indexes reviewed and attaches copies of what was found.