Orleans Parish Property Records in Louisiana

An Orleans Parish title search examines the recorded history of a property at the Land Records Division of the Clerk of Civil District Court, and because New Orleans records ownership and encumbrances on two separate indexes, it must read both. The search reads the chain of acts of sale in the conveyance records to confirm who owns the property, searches the mortgage records for every mortgage, privilege, money judgment, and lien, confirms that paid mortgages have been cancelled of record, examines any succession and judgment of possession in the chain, and accounts for civil-law interests such as a usufruct or a forced heir’s rights that can affect who may transfer. Because title passes by a notarial act of sale, a reliable search also ties each transfer to its act of sale and instrument number rather than relying on the summary conveyance entry alone. You can search the assessor and the Clerk’s indexes yourself for basic information, but a complete examination that reconciles the conveyance and mortgage records and the notarial acts is what catches an uncancelled mortgage, a recorded privilege, or an unresolved succession. U.S. Title Records performs the full search and delivers it by email, with the Expanded Title Search ($375) as the most comprehensive option.

In Orleans Parish, property records are kept on two separate indexes, and this dual system is one of the things that makes New Orleans title work distinctive. The conveyance records, kept by what was historically the Register of Conveyances, track transfers of ownership: acts of sale, donations, exchanges, partitions, rights of way, and servitudes. The mortgage records, kept by what was historically the Recorder of Mortgages, track burdens on the property: mortgages, money judgments, liens, and privileges. Those two offices, together with the Custodian of Notarial Archives, were consolidated into the Land Records Division of the Clerk of Civil District Court, and a unified indexing system now ties them together, but the conveyance index and the mortgage index remain separate record sets. When a document is recorded, a cover sheet directs it into the conveyance records, the mortgage records, both, or neither. The reason both must be searched is simple: a search of the conveyance records alone can confirm who owns a property while showing nothing about the mortgages, judgments, and privileges encumbering it, and a search of the mortgage records alone can miss a transfer of ownership. A complete title examination reads both indexes in parallel and reconciles them against the notarial acts. U.S. Title Records searches the conveyance and mortgage records together in the Full Owner Lien Report ($195), with the full chain of acts of sale in the Chain of Title ($275).

Executory process is Louisiana’s summary foreclosure remedy, and it can move considerably faster than the ordinary foreclosure suit used in many other states. It is available to a creditor whose mortgage or privilege is evidenced by an authentic act, a notarial act, that imports a confession of judgment, meaning the debtor acknowledged the debt in a form the law treats as sufficient to permit immediate enforcement. Using executory process, the creditor petitions the court for an order of seizure and sale, and on that order the sheriff seizes the property and sells it at a judicial sale, the sheriff’s sale, without the creditor having to first prove the debt through the full course of an ordinary lawsuit. Louisiana also allows foreclosure by ordinary process, the conventional suit on the debt, but executory process is the faster route when the paperwork qualifies. For someone researching or buying New Orleans property, the points that matter are that an executory-process foreclosure is recorded in the mortgage records, that the seizure and sale can change ownership on a compressed timeline, and that the Civil Sheriff, not the Clerk, conducts the sale. A complete Orleans title and lien search checks the mortgage records for any pending seizure, notice, or sheriff’s sale. U.S. Title Records reports the mortgages, privileges, judgments, and any foreclosure status in the Full Owner Lien Report ($195).

Usufruct and forced heirship are civil-law concepts with no exact common-law equivalent, and both can affect who owns and who may transfer Louisiana property. A usufruct is the right to use and enjoy a thing owned by another, including the right to its fruits, such as rent; the person holding that right is the usufructuary, and the person holding the remaining ownership is the naked owner. A common situation is a surviving spouse who receives a usufruct over the deceased spouse’s share of community property while the children hold the naked ownership, which means the person occupying or renting out a home may not be the person who can convey full ownership alone. Forced heirship protects certain descendants: a forced heir is a child of the decedent who is twenty-three years of age or younger at the time of death, or a descendant of any age who is permanently incapable of caring for himself because of a mental incapacity or physical infirmity, and a forced heir is entitled to a protected share of the estate called the legitime. Because a death in the chain of title is handled through a succession that ends in a judgment of possession placing the heirs in ownership, a title that runs through a death without a properly recorded succession, or that ignores a usufruct or a forced-heir interest, can be clouded even when the conveyance records look orderly. U.S. Title Records examines the succession and the civil-law interests in the chain in the Expanded Title Search ($375).

A complete Orleans Parish lien search reads the mortgage records of the Land Records Division, where Louisiana records the claims it calls liens and privileges: conventional mortgages, money judgments, state and federal tax liens, contractor and supplier privileges under the Private Works Act, building-contract privileges, and paving or code-enforcement liens, plus UCC filings for business debts. The key structural point is that these encumbrances are recorded in the mortgage index, which is a separate record set from the conveyance index that tracks ownership, so a search that reads only the conveyance records, or only the assessor data, will not reveal the mortgages, judgments, and privileges. Construction privileges follow a lien-and-privilege certificate process that begins when an acceptance or termination of the work is recorded, which affects timing and priority. Reading the record correctly therefore means searching the mortgage records and reconciling them with the conveyance chain. Our Lien Report ($95) covers recorded property liens and privileges, and the Full Owner Lien Report ($195) adds the judgment, tax, UCC, and bankruptcy searches against the owner.

Pricing is the same in Orleans Parish and across all 64 Louisiana parishes: Property Detail Report $29, Deed Copy $45, Title Search by Name $75, Lien Report $95, Full Owner Lien Report $195, Chain of Title $275, and Expanded Title Search $375. The $29 report is the quick ownership, parcel, and value check, the $195 report is the recommended due-diligence search that reads both the conveyance and mortgage records, and the $375 Expanded is the full title examination with the chain of acts of sale and the succession and usufruct review. There is no account, subscription, or commitment, one fee per property, delivered as a PDF by email. See the full schedule of fees. BBB A+ since 2009.