Is there a free property ownership search engine out there?
I highly doubt that real time property *ownership*, or land parcel information would be available for free over the internet (or anywhere, for that matter). In fact, I can almost say with certainty that no North American jurisdiction has made their registry system fully available online. What you may be able to find is postal information, or some sort of municipal information that ties a name to an address, but I would would warn you against necessarily thinking that the name you see in fact “owns” the property. Many jurisdictions cobble together information (even from other layers of government), but I wouldn’t trust it. If you’re looking for the registered owner of a piece of property, visit your local land registration authority, not even the assessment office. If that’s what you’re looking for, that is.
Our city also has this kind of thing. It’s called Forsyth County Geo-Data Explorer. You can get the property owner, tax payment history, taxable value, property value, and most times, a simple outline of the house itself and property boundaries. This is a relatively new thing for our county, though, and before that, you had to go downtown or use HyperTerminal to access their old-school system (which, in case you were wondering, was awesome).
