The 5-Minute Walkthrough & Quick Start

Build your property report in four steps

You don’t need an account or a password to begin. Anyone can build a public-record report on their land for free.

Step 1: Tell us where your land is

1. Press Start Your Report. Land in Oregon and Utah can be looked up today (what we can look up where).
2. Use whichever you have: a street address (easiest for most homes and parcels), a tax lot (county, map number and tax lot, or the account number from your property tax statement), or a legal description (township, range and section, or paste the description from your deed). No numbers at all? Find your land on a map.

Why a tax lot beats a street address: an address points to one lot by the mailbox, and farm and timber land often has no address at all. Your map and tax lot or account number points to the exact ground.

Want to see a finished report first? Open the sample report: the Sullivan tree farm near Pedee, Oregon, or explore the worked examples on the home page, including Dan Whitaker’s three-lot place near the Marys River.

Step 2: Check your tax lots and the outline

Many homes, farms and woodlots are taxed as two, three or four separate lots. On Your tax lots you can add adjacent lots, add lots by account number, by owner name where the county allows it, or by drawing around them on the map. Then check the outline on the map. The outline is a picture, not a legal boundary: county tax-lot lines are for assessment, not a survey.

Step 3: Read your report, from today backward

Your report starts with the last 50 years (tax account, values and taxes, owner of record and last sale, buildings by year, recent aerial photographs) and then works back through parts such as This land today, The ground, Water and weather, The people before the surveyors, The surveyors arrive, First owners, The families, Seen from above and a Timeline. The last part, If you’re hooked, tells you where the rest is kept and how to get it.

• Numbered badges: click the number after a sentence to open the record behind it.
• The record says / Our reading: what a source states, versus what we worked out from the records.
• Detail (brief, full, deep) and Written for (kids, adults, experts) change how much is shown and the wording, never the facts.

Step 4: Keep it, add your papers, and share

• Keep this land: save your report so you can return to it anytime.
• Add your own papers: once your land is saved, you can add your own files (a title policy, deeds, surveys, letters, maps, photos) to your private report. They stay private.
• Share with a private link: copy your report’s private link to send to family. If you rotate it, the old link stops working at once.

Planned enhancements: reading your uploads directly into the report narrative (such as turning a title policy’s Schedule B into a deed checklist) and an interactive Reference Desk inside your own report. See The User’s Manual.

Free companion books and state guides

• The User’s Manual by Dr. Dave Sullivan and Dr. Bob Zybach (incorporating research methodology developed by ORWW), free to read online or download as PDF or EPUB.
• The Oregon guide and Utah guide: what the site fetches automatically, which links to follow from home, and which offices to ask, with addresses, hours and copy fees. In Word, Word large print and PDF.