Guide · Florida public records

Florida deed search by name: how the clerk's grantor and grantee index works

Use the official records search of the clerk in the county where the land lies, pick a name search, and type the name last name first. Search the grantor side for deeds someone signed away and the grantee side for deeds they took, then narrow by document type and dates. If you already know the parcel, its sale's book and page or instrument number finds the deed in one step; the name search is for everything else.

Map Views · 31 October 2026 · Sources: sections 28.222, 28.2221 and 695.26, Florida Statutes, the county sales files

Two sides of one index

Under section 28.222, each clerk keeps "a general alphabetical index, direct and inverse" of everything recorded. The direct side lists the first party to a document, the grantor: on a deed, the seller or giver. The inverse side lists the second party, the grantee: the buyer. A name search is a search of that index, so the side you pick decides what comes back.

• Grantor finds what a person or company conveyed: deeds out, and on most clerks' indexes the mortgages they signed as borrower.
• Grantee finds what came to them: deeds in, and the satisfactions that clear their old mortgages.
• Both is the safe first pass when you do not know which role the name played.

Section 28.2221 requires every county's online index to reach back at least to January 1, 1990, and to carry the grantor and grantee names, the date, the book and page and the type of record. Many clerks go further back; before their start date you are into the index books at the courthouse.

Step by step

1. Pick the county. Each clerk indexes only its own county. A seller who owned land in three counties has three separate histories.
2. Type the name the way the index stores it. Last name, then first name, usually with no comma or period. For a company, its name as filed, without the comma before LLC or INC.
3. Choose the side. Grantor for a sale out, grantee for a purchase.
4. Filter the document type. Deed, warranty deed, quitclaim deed and the like. Leaving mortgages, liens and court papers out turns hundreds of rows into a few.
5. Set the dates. If you know roughly when the property changed hands, a window of a year or two around it keeps common names manageable.
6. Open the image and check it. Read the legal description against the parcel's, and the documentary stamps against the price. Section 695.26 requires each signer's name printed under the signature and the grantee's name and address on the deed, so the image settles a spelling the index got wrong.

Spellings to try when nothing comes back

The index holds what a deputy clerk keyed from the document, so it inherits every variant the deed used. Try the surname alone and scroll; try with and without the middle initial; try a former surname; try "estate" or "trustee" after the name for transfers made by a personal representative or a trust. Companies change too: an ampersand or the word "and", a trailing "the", L.L.C. against LLC. Some clerks offer "begins with" and "contains" matching. Use the looser one before you conclude a deed does not exist.

Start from the sale when you have the parcel

If the question is "who sold this lot", work from the property, not the person. The appraiser's sales list gives each transfer's month and a recording reference, and the reference opens the exact deed with no spelling to guess (how the two offices connect). Then the name search becomes a second step: once the deed tells you who the seller was, search that name as grantee to find the deed by which they bought it, and walk the title back.

Which sales files name the parties

The Department of Revenue's statewide files name no one: none of their 22,049,251 sale records on the map carries a seller or buyer. Names come only where a county's appraiser or clerk publishes them, which we found in 15 counties. For the state's 2025 sales in a selection of counties, this is the share where a record of the same parcel and month names at least one party, and the reference the county gives.

St. Lucie names the seller only, Hernando the buyer only, and Osceola, Martin and Highlands both. Where the share is 0%, as in Broward, the clerk's name search is the only way to learn who sold.

Where it stops

• A name search is county by county. There is no statewide grantor index; Florida has 67 clerks.
• The index is not the document. A misspelled index entry hides a deed from an exact search. The image is the record.
• A name proves nothing about identity. Two people with one name share an index line. Match the legal description, not the name.
• Unrecorded deals are invisible. A trust's beneficiaries or a contract never recorded will not appear under any name.

On Map Views

A parcel's History tab lists each sale with its month, price, deed type and book and page or instrument number, and shows seller and buyer in the counties above that publish them. If you hold a deed and want the parcel, Search takes a deed book and page or a document number and returns the parcels it conveyed. The owner search finds today's owner on the roll, not past sellers: for those, use the clerk's grantor index.

The county clerk's official records are the authority on what was recorded and between whom; the index is the clerk's finding aid, and the recorded image is the document. Map Views shows the sales and names as the state and each county published them.