How to Find the owner of a Property

[Lafayette Payne]

I’m sure this is a newbie question but if I want to find out who owns a rundown property in a neighborhood what are the steps I need to take or how do I find this information.

[Lore Postman]

Adding a few more suggestions to those already given:

Try Googling the name of the county and the letters "GIS". GIS stands for geographic information system and is the mapping function behind county tax records. Once inside GIS, you can search the property address and see the owner information, plus a lot of other helpful data. 

After I locate the owner this way, I like to search to see what other properties the owner has, and whether the taxes are current. 

If the owner is an LLC, you can try Googling the state and "SOS search." I'm in North Carolina, so I'd search "North Carolina SOS" or "NCSOS search." Look for an area to search the company name. That will give you the annual report filing, which has the owner or manager names and addresses.