Montgomery County Archives:
Guide to Researching Property

If you know the property owner, address, or street name:

Start at the Land Records office. The Land Records office of the Circuit Court is on the second floor in Room 218 of the Judicial Center, 50 Courthouse Square, Rockville, Maryland. It contains land records from 1777 to the present, including:

Grantor Index:

Deeds of Trust
Mortgages
Assignments
Easements
Complaints (civil)
Lis pendens (civil action pending)
Covenants (from associations)

Civil Index:

Federal tax liens
State tax liens
Notice of liens
Montgomery County tax liens
Divorce
Name Changes
Child Support

Grantee Index:

Deed
Releases
Easements

Indexes to grantee and mortgages are on paper up to 1976; the information from June 1977 to the present is available in a searchable database.

You can search by computer if you have the name of the last owner, address, or just street name.

If you know the address, try an online search:

You can also access the database through the World Wide Web at http://www.dat.state.md.us/ but can only search by address, not by name of owner. Information supplied by this database includes owner's name, time of ownership, lot, block, subdivision, recording date, assessed value, legal description, and liber folio number. This information is updated regularly by the Land Records and Tax Assessment offices.

With the liber folio number, you can then proceed to the microfilm holdings to find the deed. Only subdivided properties have plat numbers. If the property you are researching has been subdivided, and a plat exists for that property, you can obtain the plat number from the deed. If you want a copy of the plat, fill out an Order for Certified Copies at the duplicating department. Copies are $.50 each. If a property owner's subdivided property does not have a plat, he/she can have a plat drawn up by a surveyor and apply for approval of the plat at the Maryland-National Capital Parks and Planning Commission (MNCPPC). The fee for this service is $1.50. MNCPPC and Montgomery County assign different plat numbers to the same parcel of land.

If you can't find a liber folio number, you will have to search year by year for changes in ownership.

Plats are bound together in large volumes. The Land Records office only has copies of the earliest plats (volumes A and B) on microfiche. The actual volumes are in the State Archives in Annapolis. All of the numbered volumes are available in the office.

If you know the property location:

If you do not know the property owner, street name, or mailing address, you can go to the State Tax Assessment office, which is located in Rockville at 51 Monroe Street, third floor. The office holds:

Assessment rolls
Exempt assessment rolls
Assessment worksheets
Subdivision plats (copies can only be made at the Land Records office)
Agricultural transfer tax reports
Tax appeal folders
Hearing folders

The office has a searchable database that is also available through the state at http://www.dat.state.md.us/. The database was initiated in 1994. You can search by account number, owner's name, parcel number, street name, or address, but you cannot search by name of owner through the Internet. If you do not have any of this information, you can go to the Tax Assessment office to search through the maps and atlases they have available to obtain the parcel number:

Tax maps, which are updated every year, and go back to 1966
Subdivision plats from MNCPPC
Atlases for 1940, 1949, 1958, and earlier
Aerial photographs from various years between 1974 and 1992
Zoning maps from MNCPPC (refer to the MNCPPC at 301-495-4610 for additional information)

Once you have the parcel number, you can search on the computer to obtain the latest assessment information, including the current owner.

Information concerning building permits is available at the Office of Permitting Services at 255 Rockville Pike (second floor), Rockville, Maryland; telephone 240-777-6370.

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