Guide · Commercial property
Commercial property owner research in Florida, from public records alone
Start with the county property appraiser's roll: it names the owner of every Florida parcel, the mailing address of the tax bill, and a use code that says whether it is a store, an office or a warehouse. When the owner is a company, as it is for at least half of Florida's commercial parcels, read its filing on Sunbiz. Then read the building, the sales and the zoning off the same records.
1. Confirm it is commercial, and what kind
Every county reports each parcel to the Department of Revenue with a two-digit use code. Codes 10 to 39 are commercial: 10 is vacant commercial land, 11 a one-story store, 17 and 18 offices, 21 and 22 restaurants, 26 a service station, 39 a hotel or motel. Codes 40 to 49 are industrial. Read the code before anything else: it tells you what the appraiser valued, which is not always what the sign says. The county's own, finer use code often sits beside it on the appraiser's record.
2. Read the owner the way the roll writes it
Copy the owner name and the mailing address exactly. A company owner reads as a company; a person, a trust or a public body reads as such. The mailing address is where the tax bill goes, which for a company is often a manager's office or a management firm, not the property. Two parcels mailed to the same address are often held together, even under different company names.
3. Find the company on Sunbiz
Search the exact name on Sunbiz, the Division of Corporations' registry, and read the filing: status, registered agent, and the managers, members or officers with the addresses they filed. A company that manages the company is common in commercial property; follow it until the filing names people. Following an LLC to its people, why the agent is not the owner, and every company one officer runs.
4. Read the building off the roll
The roll carries the year built and an effective year, the building's square feet and the number of buildings on the parcel. The heated or living area is the finished, conditioned space; the gross area is everything under roof. Where much of a building is covered but open, or storage, the two can differ a great deal. The appraiser's record card, on the county's site, often adds the building's class, stories and each structure's own area.
What the 2026 roll holds for Florida's commercial parcels
| Use (DOR codes) | Parcels | Owner matched to Sunbiz | Building sq ft on the roll | More than one building |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Vacant commercial (10) | 86,012 | 44.8% | — | — |
| Stores and shopping centers (11-16) | 76,198 | 53.8% | 96.8% | 18.5% |
| Offices and banks (17-19, 23-24) | 91,430 | 58.9% | 95.9% | 6.7% |
| Restaurants (21-22) | 14,782 | 57.1% | 99.3% | 6.2% |
| Service stations and auto (26-27) | 19,434 | 52.1% | 97.9% | 22.4% |
| Hotels and motels (39) | 20,725 | 50.0% | 97.7% | 10.8% |
| Other commercial (20, 25, 28-38) | 35,786 | 46.9% | 50.3% | 16.6% |
| Industrial (40-49) | 97,550 | 58.4% | 80.0% | 17.3% |
Across codes 10 to 39, 344,367 parcels, 52.0% have an owner we match to a Sunbiz filing. The rest are people, trusts, public bodies, companies formed in other states that never registered here, and names the roll spells differently from the filing. Of the 258,355 improved commercial parcels, 90.3% carry building square feet; the gap is mostly the other-commercial group, where parking lots, golf courses, camps and marinas have little or no building to measure.
5. Read the sales with care
A commercial deed often carries several parcels, a shopping center and its outparcels or a block of lots, and its price is the whole deal. The Department of Revenue's sales file dates 20,087 sale records to 2025 on improved commercial parcels: 29.3% belong to a deed that covered more than one parcel, and only 4 of those are coded qualified. Divide a multi-parcel price by one lot and the number means nothing. Read the qualification code too: the Department of Revenue counts codes 01 and 02 as arm's-length sales, and 30.4% of those 2025 records carry one. Our report marks 01 to 06 as qualified, so check the code itself. Comps from recorded sales.
6. Check what the zoning allows
The use code says what is there now; the zoning says what may be there. We map a zoning code on 86.6% of improved commercial parcels, 85.3% of vacant commercial and 89.1% of industrial, with the code's description and the city or county that set it; future land use, the plan behind the zoning, sits beside it. Where no code shows, the city or county answers. Future land use vs zoning.
Where it stops
- Leases and income. Who occupies the building, at what rent, is not a public record. Neither are the owner's books.
- Debt. Mortgages sit in the clerk's official records, by the owner's name, not on the roll. Which office holds what.
- Out-of-state companies. Sunbiz shows only what a foreign company filed in Florida; the rest is with its home state's registry.
- Condos of offices or warehouses. Each unit is its own parcel, with its own owner.
On Map Views
Type the address. The report gives the owner and mailing address, the use code with the county's own beside it, building and total square feet, year built and effective year, the number of buildings, values and every recorded sale, marked qualified or not and multi-parcel or not, with zoning, future land use and flood. When the owner is a company, its Sunbiz filing, agent and officers sit under the name. One tap lists every parcel that owner holds statewide, and another every parcel mailed to the same address. Export either list as a CSV, and keep your own notes on the parcel.
The county property appraiser is the authority on a parcel's owner, use and building; Sunbiz on a company's filing; the clerk's official records on deeds and mortgages; the city or county on zoning. We copy their public records as published.