Every transfer of a property leaves a recorded instrument, and read in order they form a chain: who conveyed it to whom, when, by what kind of deed, and what was financed against it along the way. PlotCipher assembles that sequence for one address and shows where it is continuous and where it is not.
Each deed names who conveyed the property and who received it. The grantee on one instrument should be the grantor on the next. Where that holds, the chain is continuous; where it does not, something happened that was recorded differently or not recorded at all.
Inheritance, divorce, transfers into and out of trusts and LLCs, tax sales and foreclosure all move title without a conventional sale between two unrelated parties. They are normal, and they are the usual explanation for an apparent gap.
A deed of trust recorded shortly after a conveyance is almost always the purchase money. Assignments move that loan between servicers without changing what the borrower owes. A release closes it. Reading the financing beside the transfers is what turns a list of documents into an account of what happened.
Properties with a notice on file, shown as examples of what the county record holds. Research works on any address in either county, not only these.
The ordered sequence of recorded instruments that conveyed a property from one owner to the next. Each deed's grantee should appear as the grantor on the following one; that continuity is what makes the chain.
As far as the county's recorded index reaches and remains legible. PlotCipher reports what it found and where the record stops, rather than implying completeness it cannot demonstrate.
Most often a transfer that was not a conventional sale - inheritance, divorce, a move into or out of a trust or LLC, a tax sale or a foreclosure. Occasionally an instrument was recorded under a name spelled differently enough to fall out of the index.
No. It shows what was recorded. Clear title is a legal conclusion that a title company or an attorney reaches, and PlotCipher is neither.
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