Guide · Florida companies
Sunbiz search vs parcel records linked to Sunbiz: what each finds, and how often the link holds
Sunbiz answers one lookup at a time, by company name, officer, agent or document number, and it holds no property. A parcel map that has matched each owner on the county roll to its Sunbiz filing starts from the land and runs both ways: parcel to people, company to every parcel. In our data 74.0% of parcels with a company owner name carry a match; clipped names, trusts and unregistered companies are where it fails.
What a search on Sunbiz does by hand
The Division of Corporations' search page offers a set of doors into the same registry: by Name, by Officer/Registered Agent, by Registered Agent Name, by FEI/EIN, Detail by Document Number, by Zip Code and by Street Address. Each one returns filings. None returns a parcel, because the registry records companies, not what they own.
So a by-hand trace of one property has four legs:
- Read the owner line on the county appraiser's site.
- Type it into the Name search and pick the filing from the alphabetical list it opens.
- Read the filing's managers or officers.
- To learn what else the company holds, go back to the appraiser, and to every other county's appraiser, and search the name again.
The first three legs take a few minutes. The fourth is the slow one, and it is the one the registry cannot do for you.
How the link is made in our data
Each owner name on the 2026 roll is cleaned before it is compared: letters and digits only, the roll's abbreviations spelled out, a leading THE dropped. Then a parcel gets a match only when one of these holds, and the report names which:
| Why the parcel was matched, measured 1 November 2026 | Grade | Parcels |
|---|---|---|
| The name fits exactly one active filing | Confident | 588,301 |
| The name fits, and the tax bill's address matches the filing's, unit included | Confident | 557,523 |
| A name cut short on the roll, with the address agreeing | Confident | 19,183 |
| A former name, a successor after a merger, or a fictitious name | Confident | 836 |
| The name fits and the street matches, but not the unit | Probable | 56,666 |
| The address matches and the core of the name agrees | Probable | 41,288 |
| All matched parcels | 1,263,797 |
A name shared by several active filings, with no address to settle it, gets no match. Leaving a parcel blank is the safer error than tying it to the wrong company.
How often it holds, county by county
We counted parcels whose owner name carries a company word (LLC, INC, CORP, LP, LTD, CO and their spellings): 1,651,369 across the 67 rolls. Of those, 1,221,216 are matched, 74.0%. Another 42,579 parcels are matched although their owner line carries none of those words, often because the ending was cut off.
| County | Company-named parcels | Matched | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Washington | 16,011 | 13,824 | 86.3% |
| Martin | 11,508 | 9,688 | 84.2% |
| Brevard | 38,070 | 30,633 | 80.5% |
| Broward | 105,603 | 82,158 | 77.8% |
| Miami-Dade | 206,656 | 159,920 | 77.4% |
| Orange | 70,623 | 54,269 | 76.8% |
| Hillsborough | 85,752 | 65,759 | 76.7% |
| Palm Beach | 78,488 | 59,035 | 75.2% |
| Polk | 78,698 | 56,740 | 72.1% |
| Pinellas | 58,035 | 40,485 | 69.8% |
| Santa Rosa | 13,684 | 7,750 | 56.6% |
| Suwannee | 4,560 | 2,163 | 47.4% |
| Taylor | 2,527 | 1,164 | 46.1% |
| All 67 counties | 1,651,369 | 1,221,216 | 74.0% |
Where the link fails
- Names cut at 30 characters. In 55 counties no owner line on our copy of the roll runs past 30 characters, so a long company name loses its tail, LLC often included. There, company names that reach 29 or 30 characters are matched 58.5% of the time (48,733 of 83,368), against 75.8% for shorter ones. By hand, type the clipped name into Sunbiz's Name search anyway: the list opens at the nearest names, so the full one sits close by.
- Dissolved companies. They stay matched: 18,311 parcels point to 10,599 inactive filings. Our copy is the state's July 2026 file, so a company dissolved or reinstated since then still shows its July status. What dissolution does to the title is in what happens when the LLC that owns a property is dissolved.
- Trusts. 683,101 parcels have TRUST, TR or TRUSTEE in the owner line, and only 9,073 of them (1.3%) match a filing. A family or land trust is not a company and does not register with the state; how to read a trust owner name explains what the deed shows instead.
- Companies formed elsewhere. An out-of-state company that never registered to do business in Florida has no Sunbiz filing to match, by hand or by map.
Which one is faster
For a single company whose exact name you already hold, Sunbiz by hand is quick and is the authority. The linked record wins on the fourth leg. 12,066 filings in our data are matched to ten parcels or more, and one is matched to 15,782; no registry search lists those parcels, and doing it county by county is the slow part of any trace.
On Map Views
Open a parcel owned by a company and the report's Sunbiz section shows the filing: its name, type, status and document number, then a line that reads Matched to this parcel, with the grade and the reason from the table above. Below it are the registered agent and every manager or officer with the city and state filed. The Sunbiz record link opens the filing itself on the state's site. Tap the company's name to list every parcel matched to it, in any county. To go from a person instead, see every company one person is an officer of.
The Division of Corporations' filing is the authority on a company; the county roll is the authority on who owns the parcel. Our link between the two is a match on names and addresses, graded so you can see how sure it is. Check a probable match on Sunbiz before anything rests on it.