San Francisco Property Records: How to Search Deeds, Liens, and Title

Start with the block and lot rather than the address. The Office of the Assessor-Recorder, at City Hall, Room 190, 1 Dr. Carlton B. Goodlett Place, maintains the recorded index, and its online search accepts block and lot, document number, or name, but not a street address. Converting an address into a parcel is the first step, which the city’s Property Information Map handles. Submit the address to us instead and an abstractor resolves the parcel, searches the index, retrieves pre-1990 instruments at the counter where needed, and returns the findings as a PDF with a recording reference on every entry, from $29.

The Assessor-Recorder indexes by block and lot, document number, and grantor or grantee name. Street address is not an indexed field, which surprises most first-time searchers and is the single most common reason an SF search returns nothing. The city’s Property Information Map converts an address into a block and lot, and that parcel identifier is what the recorded index actually responds to. Every order we take accepts either the address or the parcel, because resolving one to the other is part of the examination rather than the customer’s problem.

January 1, 1990. The Assessor-Recorder’s Records Manager covers documents recorded on or after that date, and the Easy Access service launched in November 2024 added free document previews and instant copy purchase. The online system excludes pre-1990 instruments entirely, leaving City Hall, Room 190 as the only route to them. Given the age of San Francisco’s building stock, a meaningful share of controlling deeds, easements, and unreleased security instruments sit behind that 1990 line, which is why counter retrieval is part of the work rather than an upsell.

Not directly, and this is the largest gap between clean title and a sound purchase in the city. Rent control and just-cause eviction protections under San Francisco Administrative Code Chapter 37 apply to most buildings constructed before June 1979, and they are not recorded encumbrances. They appear in no title index because they are not instruments. A buyer acquires the building subject to every existing tenancy, every below-market rent, and every eviction restriction, and a title report showing a perfectly clean chain says nothing about any of it. Rent-roll and tenancy diligence is a separate inquiry, and treating it as one is the honest framing.

Tenancy in common is a co-ownership form San Francisco relies on heavily, frequently where local rules make condominium conversion impractical. Several buyers take undivided fractional interests in a single parcel, then allocate exclusive occupancy of specific units through a private written TIC agreement. The chain carries the vesting itself; the occupancy allocation, the fractional percentages, and the cost-sharing terms usually live in an unrecorded agreement between the co-owners. A title examination establishes the recorded fractional interests and any recorded TIC instrument. The selling co-owner supplies the unrecorded agreement.

San Francisco title search costs run from $29 to $385, flat, and identical to every other county in the country. The Property Detail Report is $29, the Deed Copy $45, the Property Lien Report $95, the Title Search by Name $95, the Personal Lien Report $125, the Full Property/Owner Lien Report $195, the Chain of Title Report $375, and the Expanded Title Search $385. The city charges its own certified copy fees, roughly $2.00 for a first page plus a per-page and certification charge, which are the government’s fees and separate from any report.

San Francisco levies a graduated documentary transfer tax that climbs with the sale price and reaches the highest rate in California on the largest transactions, up to six percent on sales above twenty-five million dollars. Because the city calculates the tax from consideration, an examiner can derive a sale price from the transfer tax on a recorded deed even where the instrument omits the price. That inference is a standard part of reading an SF chain, and it is one reason the recorded transfer record carries analytical value beyond the conveyance itself.

Under California Civil Code 2924, a trustee sale extinguishes liens junior to the foreclosing deed of trust while several categories survive. Property tax liens always survive and transfer with the parcel. Senior deeds of trust recorded before the foreclosing lien remain attached. Federal tax liens survive subject to a 120-day IRS redemption right. In San Francisco the additional consideration is occupancy: a foreclosure does not terminate rent-controlled tenancies, so a bidder acquires the tenancies along with the parcel.

No. We perform title research and deliver due diligence reports, and we are not an underwriter. San Francisco illustrates why the distinction is worth stating plainly: the risks that most often damage an SF purchase, rent-controlled tenancies, an unrecorded TIC occupancy agreement, or a pre-1990 instrument outside the online index, are research questions rather than insurable defects. A policy issued by a licensed underwriter covers a different category of risk, and that industry follows standards the American Land Title Association represents.

Proposition 13 caps assessed value at base-year value plus no more than 2 percent annually, resetting to market value on a change of ownership. San Francisco carries the widest assessed-to-market gaps in the state because values have risen so far above long-held base years, so the supplemental tax bill following a purchase is frequently the largest single surprise in the transaction. The recorded assessed value describes what the seller pays, not what the buyer will pay, which is why the $29 Property Detail Report returns both figures.