For people buying land they have not stood on

Know the ground
before it is yours

You have been looking for this place for years. Before the money moves, a Land Profile reads what the county and federal records actually say about the parcel — the way in, the water, what is underneath, what the county allows — and tells you what they show, and where they stop.

Start a free screen What it costs

No account · One parcel · Answer in about a minute

One finding from a real Land Profile

40.2 acres near Elfrida Land Profile · Cochise County, Arizona

The way in Settle this before you close

No recorded easement connects this parcel to a public right of way. The road shown in the listing photographs crosses two parcels in separate ownership.

Read in the Cochise County Recorder's instrument index, 1974 to today, searched by parcel number and by grantor

What is underneath The record does not say

Whether the mineral estate was severed from the surface could not be established. The deed index begins in 1974, and anything filed before that year is on paper only.

Ask at the Recorder's office, 1415 Melody Lane, Bisbee — grantor books, pre-1974

The rules we work by

Ours, not a standard anyone holds us to. They are written down here so you can.

Every finding names the record it came from, and the office that holds it. If we cannot trace it, it does not appear.

We never tell you whether to buy, what it is worth, or whether it can be built on. Those are yours to decide and ours to inform.

When a record cannot be reached we say so and name who to ask. Silence is never an answer.

A hazard we find is named in the free screen, whether or not you ever pay us. We charge for the work, never for the warning.

The second card is the whole product

Most land research returns what it found. The difficult and valuable thing is returning what it could not find — because that is where the money is lost.

A county whose deed index only reaches back to 1974 is not a gap in our report. It is a material fact about buying land in that county, and you want it before your inspection period ends, not after closing.

So a Land Profile never returns silence. Every subject appears in every profile, and one we could not settle is reported as the record does not say — with the office, the address, and the exact question to put to them.

Most granular first, and everything that answers is kept. Length is how finely a level draws the ground — not how much authority it has, which is not ours to rank.

Records can differ without being wrong — granularity provides clarity, corroboration provides confidence

We read the same parcel at more than one level of government, and much of the time those records do not match. That is normal, and it is the reason to read more than one in the first place. A difference between two records is information — it is not automatically bad news, and it usually is not anybody being wrong.

What matters is what kind of difference it is, because “the records disagree” covers four situations that mean four different things. Only one of them is a contradiction.

One record carries more than the other. A township holds a property card the statewide roll does not, and it names the number of units, the year of a permit, the classification behind a code. Where the two overlap they agree; one simply goes further. That is the finer record adding detail, and it should raise your confidence rather than spend it. It is what a granularity scale is for.

The records describe different things. A soil survey and a zoning map cover the same acre and answer unrelated questions. Neither confirms the other and neither contradicts it. We set both down and say which is which.

Two records give one particular two values that cannot both be right. The assessor taxes 19,998 square feet; the map draws 10,358. This is the finding — the thing you could not have turned up yourself in an afternoon, and the thing worth a phone call. We print both figures, name both sources, and we do not choose between them. Neither of them is a survey, and which one governs is a question for the county.

And sometimes two records say exactly the same thing. Two offices, kept separately, by different people, on different schedules — landing on one answer. That agreement is worth stating plainly, and we do.

None of this is a score. We do not tell you how sure we are. We tell you what we asked, what each record answered, where they part company, and what we asked that came back silent — and a source that returned nothing is named too, because that is the record being quiet where we looked rather than a place we skipped.

Four things “the records differ” can mean, and only the last is a contradiction. A record that carries MORE is the finer rung adding detail — and two separately kept records landing on one answer is worth saying out loud.

What we read, and what we never say

In the Land Profile

The way inWhether a recorded easement actually connects the parcel to a public road — and whether a road exists on the ground, which is a different question.
WaterWell records nearby, depths, and who has authority over a new well.
What the ground will takeSoil ratings for a septic system, and the office that permits one here.
Water that arrivesMapped flood and wetland extent, and what that mapping does and does not establish.
What is underneathWhether the mineral estate appears to have been severed from the surface.
What is already run to itHigh-voltage transmission and substations near the parcel, overhead or buried where the record says, and who to ask about the pipelines nobody publishes.
What the county allowsMinimum lot size, frontage, setbacks, and what may actually be built.
Who owned it before youThe conveyances, exceptions, reservations and covenants in the chain — plus taxes and liens owed.
What is left to askEvery unsettled item, and exactly who can settle it.

Never in it

A recommendationWe report what public records state. Whether to buy is yours.
A buildability rulingOnly the county can make one. We tell you who to ask.
A survey, title opinion or appraisalThis is desk research and says so on every page.
A guessWhen something cannot be established, the profile says the record does not say, and names who can settle it.
A Phase I, or All Appropriate InquiriesIt is not a Phase I ESA under ASTM E1527-21, not a Transaction Screen under ASTM E1528-22, and it does not satisfy the federal All Appropriate Inquiries rule at 40 CFR Part 312. Those require a site visit and an Environmental Professional as that term is defined at 40 CFR 312.10. If you need the liability protections that come with All Appropriate Inquiries, you need one of those and this is not it.
A certification we do not holdFollowing guidance is a practice; conformance is a claim. We make the first and not the second. We hold no certification from any standards body and we claim none - and where we align ourselves to a standard, this page will say which one and what it changed.
Speaking to anyone for youThose conversations are yours, and they should be. We give you the office, the person and the exact question — so when you call, you already know what the record shows.

Free screen

Tell us the parcel and we will read the county's own record for it — the parcel itself, which government is responsible there, what the zoning allows, the flood zone, and which road serves it. You get what those records say, each one named, so you can go look at it yourself. If we have not mapped that county yet, you still get the national reading for that exact spot — which county and township you are in, the flood zone, wetlands, the survey grid, who manages the land around it, and what was recorded there before — with the office named for anything the record does not settle.

It is not a Land Profile. The free screen tells you what the record says. It does not tell you what any of it means — that a county-maintained road is not the same as a right to use one, what the county will and will not permit there, what is underneath, who owned it before you, and what is left to ask. That is the Land Profile, and it is read by a person.

The free screen asks the record one question at one point. The Land Profile measures the boundary itself — which is the line between them, and it is a line of work rather than of generosity.

State

County or set a point below

Parcel number, coordinates, or a survey description

Where to send it

Right-click the pin in Google Maps and choose the coordinates to copy them. If what you have is a survey description — T. 22 S., R. 60 E., Sec. 13, the way a federal notice or an auction catalog writes it — paste that instead.

Price

One price for the Land Profile, in any county whose records we can read online. If a county keeps its index behind a vendor's paywall, or its index has a hole in it, that is our cost and not yours — we say so in the report, and it does not change what you pay.

How the county keeps its records	Profile	Back to you
Free screenThe record as it stands at one point, cited, with the office named for anything it does not settle.	$0	Minutes
Land ProfileAny county whose records we can read online. A vendor paywall or a gap in the index is our cost, not yours.	$299	Same day
Three parcelsThe same reading on three lots you are choosing between, 15% off.	$762	Same day
Deeper searchonly if you want itEvery online index starts in some year. This is somebody pulling the books behind that year for this parcel’s chain. Try the Land Profile first — it fits most people.	+$250	5–7 days
Paper-only countyNo online index at all. Somebody stands at a counter and turns pages, and that is itself worth knowing before you buy there.	$549	5–7 days

You are told the price and the turnaround before any payment, and the figure above is the whole of it — nothing is added at checkout. If we cannot cover your county, we say so rather than selling you a thinner answer. Every report is read live from the offices that publish the records, so a government service being slow or down can delay one — when that happens we would rather be late than send you a document with a silence in it, and we will tell you.

Where each county’s online deed index begins. The bar is what a search can reach; everything to the left of it is on paper. Nine offices, nine states, read one at a time.

Or: a Listing Check — $39

A different question, and a smaller one. You type in what the listing told you — the acreage, the flood zone, the zoning, the road, the taxes, whether it is buildable — and we set each claim beside what the record says, one line each, with the record named. Where they agree you can stop wondering. Where they differ, you have the citation to take to the agent. Any county, and it runs in minutes.

It answers what the county publishes as data, which is more in some counties than others — typically most of what you type, not always all of it. Any claim we could not check is marked as unchecked rather than quietly dropped.

It is not a smaller Land Profile. It checks what you were told; it does not read the deed chain, the ordinance or the road list, and it does not tell you what any of it means.

Check a listing — $39

Order a Land Profile — $299

One parcel, any county whose records we can read online. You are told the price before you pay and it is the whole of it.

If we cannot cover your county we refund you in full and tell you why — we do not send a thinner answer instead. If you would rather know first, the free screen above says what we can read there, in minutes, for nothing.

Order a Land Profile — $299

Buying three parcels you are choosing between? Three for $762. Need the record read behind where the county’s online index starts? That is the deeper search, and it is worth asking us about first — most people do not need it.

If we get something wrong, tell us - and here is what we do

Records change, indexes get republished, and we make mistakes. If anything in a report does not match what you find, write to [email protected]. You do not need to be the person who bought it.

What we do

We answerYou get a reply from a person within one business day, saying what we are doing about it.
We tell you what we foundWithin five business days we tell you whether the record supports the correction, and what we changed.
We reissueIf a finding changes, you get a corrected document with the change marked and dated. There is no charge for that, ever.
We contact youIf a finding we already delivered turns out to be wrong in a way that would change a decision, we contact everyone we sent it to. We do not wait to be asked.
We write it downEvery correction goes into a ledger we keep, so the same mistake is not available to us twice.

Who, and what we cannot do

Who answersThe member of Hearthseeker LLC is responsible for this and answers [email protected] personally.
What we cannot fixWe cannot correct the public record itself. Where the error is the county's rather than ours, we will say so, name the office that can fix it, and tell you what we found.
Why this is hereWe looked for another company in this field publishing a correction policy and could not find one. Every report we have read tells you its turnaround; none of them tells you what happens when it is wrong.

What we would ask for our own hearth

The questions we would put to a parcel before we put our own money on it.

Is this a survey?

No. It is desk research from public records, and it says so on every page. A survey establishes boundaries and a surveyor stamps it. We tell you what the public record says and what it does not settle — often that is enough to walk away before you spend fifteen hundred dollars on a survey.

Will you tell me whether to buy it?

No, and what you get in its place is better for the decision you are actually making. Every finding names the record it came from and says what else confirms it. A report that concludes is selling you judgment we cannot stand behind; a report that shows its workings lets you reach a conclusion nobody can take off you.

What you get instead: every record, and whether they agree

Several agreeMore than one record says the same thing, and they were read separately. On one Mount Ephraim lot, three independent ways of measuring the same boundary agreed to within thirty square feet: 4,809, 4,815 and 4,782.
One record says itOne record says this. That is not a weakness - it is often the only office that holds it - but nothing independent confirms it. The state's purveyor layer is the only record that names who supplies water to a given parcel. Nothing else publishes it, so nothing else can confirm it - and you should know that.
They disagreeTwo records of the same fact do not agree. You get both. The disagreement is the finding, and we have not resolved it. On a house in the same borough the assessor taxes 19,998 square feet and the map draws 10,358. We give you both. The missing 9,639 is a garden, and the disagreement is the finding.
They disagreed, and we settled itTwo records disagreed and we established which one is the record, with the reason stated. A state soil layer and the federal survey disagreed about the ground under one parcel. The state's copy was serving a map unit key the federal survey no longer recognizes - so we could say which one is the record, and why.

None of this is added up and none of it is scored. It is the state of the record, laid out, so the judgment is yours and you can see exactly what it rests on.

What if the answer is that you could not find out?

You get that in writing, with the reason and with who can find out. That is not a failure of the product. A county with no online deed index is itself a material fact about buying land there, and knowing it before your inspection period ends is worth the fee.

Do you cover my county?

For the free screen, yes — anywhere in the United States. Most of what a screen reads is federal and answers the same way in all 3,143 counties: which county and township you are actually in, the flood zone, wetlands, the survey grid, who manages the land around you, and what was recorded on that spot before.

For the paid Land Profile, not yet. That needs the county's own records — the deed index, the parcel mapping, the zoning authority — and we map a county properly before we sell in it. Only two things are genuinely local and cannot be read from anywhere else: zoning, and who maintains the road. Everything else we can already answer. Ask and we will tell you where yours stands.

Why is it called Hearthseeker?

Because you are not buying land. You are looking for a place to put a hearth. The work is records research, but the reason anyone does it is a house, a camp, a farm, or somewhere to finally stop looking.