To find out who owns a property, business, or domain, you go to the public registry that matches the asset. Real estate ownership lives with the county recorder. Business ownership lives with the Secretary of State, with extra disclosures at the SEC for public companies. Domain ownership lives with ICANN’s lookup system. Vehicles, aircraft, vessels, and intellectual property each have their own federal or state database, and some are open to anyone while others require you to show a legitimate reason to look.
Real Estate: Start With the County Recorder
Property ownership is a county-level record. The office is called the County Recorder, Registrar of Deeds, or Clerk’s Office depending on where you are, and most now have online portals where you can search by street address or by the parcel identification number assigned by the local assessor.
The document that confirms current ownership is the most recent recorded deed. It names the buyer, called the grantee, as the title holder. If you want the full history, the grantor-grantee index lets you trace the chain of title backward through every prior sale and surfaces any liens, easements, or other encumbrances recorded against the parcel. A certified copy of a deed usually costs a few dollars per page.
When the Owner Is a Trust or an LLC
A growing share of owners hold property through a trust or an LLC precisely to keep their personal names off the public record. A trust-held deed reads something like “Jane Smith, Trustee of the Smith Family Trust.” The trust document itself is private and is not filed with any public office, so the beneficiaries are generally not discoverable through a records search.
LLC-held property creates a similar wall. The deed names the LLC, and you have to run a separate search in the state’s business entity database to find the people behind it. Some states let a single-member LLC list only a registered agent, not the actual owner. If the entity search dead-ends, the remaining avenues are legal discovery in active litigation or sometimes the property tax billing records, which occasionally show a different mailing address than the LLC’s registered office.
Businesses: Secretary of State and SEC
Every state runs a searchable Secretary of State database for corporations, LLCs, and limited partnerships. Searching by the entity’s legal name pulls up its articles of organization or incorporation and periodic filings that list officers, directors, managers, or members. These searches are usually free and return results immediately.
Know what the filing actually shows. It identifies who manages or controls the entity, not necessarily who owns the equity. An LLC’s membership interests are governed by the operating agreement, which is a private document that is never filed with the state. For a basic lookup of who runs the company, the state database is enough. For true ownership, you often need more.
Trade Names and DBAs
If a business operates under a name different from its registered name, most jurisdictions require a “fictitious business name” or “doing business as” filing. These are recorded at the county clerk’s office rather than with the Secretary of State. A county search for a trade name reveals the legal person or entity behind it. The filing is limited to the county where it is recorded, so a statewide answer may require checking multiple counties.
Publicly Traded Companies
Ownership transparency jumps for companies with publicly traded stock. Anyone who acquires more than five percent of a public company’s shares must file a disclosure with the Securities and Exchange Commission within ten days, identifying themselves, their source of funds, and whether they intend to seek control.1Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 USC 78m – Periodical and Other Reports Officers and directors separately report their holdings and transactions. All of it is searchable for free in the SEC’s EDGAR database.2Securities and Exchange Commission. EDGAR Full Text Search
What FinCEN Does Not Give You
The Corporate Transparency Act once promised a federal beneficial ownership registry for small companies, but an interim final rule published in March 2025 exempted every company formed in the United States. Only entities formed under foreign law and registered to do business in a U.S. state or tribal jurisdiction still have to report.3FinCEN.gov. Beneficial Ownership Information Reporting Even for those entities, the database is not open to the public. Access is restricted to federal law enforcement, state and local agencies with a court order, financial institutions doing required due diligence, and certain regulators.4FinCEN.gov. Fact Sheet: Beneficial Ownership Information Access and Safeguards Final Rule If you were counting on FinCEN to tell you who owns a U.S. company, it will not.
Vehicles: DMV Access Is Restricted
To identify the owner of a car or truck, you need either the vehicle identification number or the license plate, and you need a reason. State motor vehicle agencies hold the records, but the federal Driver’s Privacy Protection Act limits disclosure to specific permissible uses, which include a lawsuit, an insurance claim investigation, and certain government functions. Curiosity is not on the list.5Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 US Code 2721 – Prohibition on Release and Use of Certain Personal Information From State Motor Vehicle Records
The usual process is a form submitted to the state motor vehicle agency, a declaration of the permissible purpose, and an administrative fee. Misusing the data has civil and criminal consequences, so declare an accurate purpose.
Vehicle History Through NMVTIS
If what you really want is the vehicle’s history rather than its owner, the National Motor Vehicle Title Information System is the federal resource. Administered by the Department of Justice, NMVTIS pulls title and brand data from participating state DMVs, insurance carriers, salvage auctions, and recyclers.6Office of Justice Programs. For Consumers – VehicleHistory A report shows whether the vehicle was reported as salvage or junk, whether the title carries a brand like “flood” or “rebuilt,” and includes odometer readings and total loss data. It does not include accident repair or maintenance records, but it is the most reliable way to catch title washing.
Aircraft and Vessels
Aircraft are easier to look up than cars. The FAA’s Civil Aviation Registry is public, searchable by the N-number painted on the tail, and shows the registered owner’s name and address. It is updated each federal working day at midnight, and no permissible-purpose rule applies.7Federal Aviation Administration. Aircraft Inquiry – N-Number Search
Commercial vessels and recreational boats over five net tons in federal waters are documented through the U.S. Coast Guard’s National Vessel Documentation Center. An Abstract of Title costs $25 and a Certificate of Ownership costs $125, both ordered through the NVDC’s electronic storefront.8United States Coast Guard. National Vessel Documentation Center Table of Fees The Coast Guard has warned that third-party companies advertising documentation services are not authorized to issue official records.9United States Coast Guard. National Vessel Documentation Center
Patents, Trademarks, and Copyrights
Intellectual property ownership runs through federal registries, split by type. For patents and trademarks, the USPTO’s Assignment Center, launched in October 2025, consolidated two older tools into one.10United States Patent and Trademark Office. USPTO Enhances Assignment Records Search Process You can search by patent number, application number, assignee name, or assignor name and trace every recorded transfer from the original filer forward. The patent assignment records run from August 1980 to the present.11United States Patent and Trademark Office. Assignment Center – Patent Search The USPTO records assignments as a ministerial function and does not verify that the paperwork reflects a valid transaction.
Copyrights sit with a different agency entirely. The U.S. Copyright Office, part of the Library of Congress, runs the Copyright Public Records System, which covers registrations from 1978 forward along with a historical catalog reaching back to 1898.12U.S. Copyright Office. Copyright Public Records Portal Search by title, author, claimant, or registration number. Copyright exists from the moment a work is created, so not every protected work is in the registry; registration is optional. It is required to sue for infringement, though, so commercially significant works are almost always registered.
Domains and Websites
Domain ownership data lives with the individual registrars and is accessed through RDAP, the protocol that replaced the older WHOIS system. ICANN’s lookup tool queries registrars in real time and returns the registrar of record, the registration and expiration dates, and whatever contact information the registrant has chosen to make public.13ICANN Lookup. ICANN Lookup
In practice, most owners today pay for a privacy proxy service that substitutes the proxy company’s contact details for their own. The lookup then shows the proxy, not the person. This is legitimate. If you need to reach the actual owner for a legal matter, you can send a notice to the registrar for forwarding, or file a UDRP proceeding if the dispute involves a trademark.
Registrants are required to keep their contact information accurate under the terms of their registration agreement. Under ICANN’s Registrar Accreditation Agreement, willfully supplying false data, or ignoring an accuracy inquiry from the registrar for fifteen days, is grounds for suspension or cancellation of the domain.14ICANN. Keeping Registration Data Accurate
UCC Filings: Who Has a Claim on an Asset
One more search is worth knowing about because it answers a related question. When a business pledges equipment, inventory, or other non-real-estate property as collateral, the lender files a UCC-1 financing statement with the Secretary of State in the state where the debtor is organized. Searching by debtor name or filing number is free or low-cost in most states.
A UCC search does not confirm outright ownership. It tells you something adjacent and often more useful: whether anyone else already has a legal claim against the asset. If you are buying business equipment, acquiring a company, or lending against collateral, running the UCC search first is how you avoid finding out later that a secured creditor is ahead of you in line.