How to find who owns a property in Puerto Rico

In Puerto Rico a property's owner shows up in two places, and it is not always the same name.

• The government office that collects property tax has a public parcel map. It shows the owner, the address, the tax value and often the last sale. Searching it costs nothing, and you can search by address, by catastro number or by the owner's name.
• The public property registry keeps the recorded deeds. It shows the legal owner, who owned it before, and the mortgages, liens and other charges. To search it you need an account and the property's finca number, and certifications have a fee.

The tax map changes the owner when the new owner tells that office. The registry changes it when the deed is presented and recorded. So it is common for them to differ, for example in these cases.

• A sale whose deed was never recorded.
• An owner who died, whose heirs have not done the paperwork.
• A property with several owners, where the map shows only one.
• A sale so recent that one of the two does not show it yet.

If you are buying, the registry is what counts. Before closing, a notary or a title company does that title study.

• Look the property up by address or catastro number on a parcel map. Write down the owner, the catastro number and, if it shows, the finca number.
• With the finca number, check in the public property registry who the recorded owner is and whether there are mortgages or liens.
• If the owner is a company, look it up in the government's public registry of companies. It shows the company's address, its resident agent and its officers.
• If the owner died, search their name in the courts' public case search. A declaratoria de herederos says who the heirs are.

An empty house still has an owner, even if nobody lives there, and the steps are the same. If the owner died, the house passes to the heirs, even if the registry still shows the owner's name.

If the town declared it an estorbo público, special rules apply, explained in the guide on abandoned homes.

Never go into a property without its owner's permission.

In Flipeo PR you search by address or catastro number, and the property opens on the map with its owner on record, its tax value and its recorded sales.

On the Investor plan you can also search by the owner's name, whether it is a person or a company.