Tuesday, August 11, 2026

Property records are public records.

Anyone in our industry knows that. For generations, anyone willing to visit the county recorder, search an index or pull a deed could discover who owned a parcel of land. Public notice is one of the foundations of our property system. It protects ownership, establishes debt priorities and gives buyers confidence in what they’re purchasing.

Two weeks ago, New York City sparked a different conversation.

As part of implementing its new pied-à-terre tax, the city published a searchable database identifying property owners who might be subject to the new assessment. The information itself came from existing public records. What changed was the way it was assembled and presented: names, addresses and property information gathered into one searchable list, published on the website of the New York City Department of Finance (DOF). The database included a number of recognizable property owners, drawing national attention almost immediately.  It’s also left the people on the list (many of whom were supportive of the new tax) feeling…well, doxxed.

Whether you agree with the tax is beside the point.

Whether you agree with publishing the database is a little bit, too.

The more interesting question is one our industry may be uniquely positioned to ask.  Is there a meaningful difference between a public record and a curated list?

For more than two centuries, public records carried a certain amount of natural friction. You generally had to know where to look. You needed a county, a legal description, an owner’s name or at least a reason to begin searching. The records were open to everyone, but they weren’t assembled around a particular group of people.

Technology has changed that.

Today, millions of public records can be gathered, sorted and reorganized in seconds. Instead of asking, “Who owns this parcel?” someone can ask, “Show me everyone who owns a second home.” Or everyone who owns property through an LLC. Or everyone who fits almost any other set of criteria.

That’s a fundamentally different use of the same information.

Our recording system was designed to answer questions about property. Increasingly, technology allows it to answer questions about people.

Those aren’t the same thing.

The county recorder’s office wasn’t created to identify categories of owners. It exists to establish notice, preserve chains of title and create confidence that ownership can be trusted. Its purpose is wonderfully specific: Who owns this piece of land, and can I rely on that answer?  That’s a different mission than creating a ready-made list organized around wealth, residency, business structure or any other characteristic.

Governments have long published certain lists derived from public records. Tax foreclosure notices are an obvious example. Those publications serve a well-established legal purpose: providing notice before property rights are affected and informing the public of upcoming sales. They are part of the legal process itself.  Searchable UCC filings work similarly; the search function isn’t incidental, it’s central to the legal framework.

No, this is a different question entirely. When a government creates a searchable list of a particular class of property owners, separate from the underlying public records and separate from the legal notices sent to those owners, it raises a broader question about the evolving purpose of public records in the digital age.

None of this suggests property records should become private. Quite the opposite. Public recording remains one of the great strengths of American real estate. Transparency has protected buyers, lenders and property owners for generations.

But as our ability to aggregate information grows, we may need to recognize that transparency and discoverability are no longer identical concepts.

The deed sitting in a county record book and the same deed incorporated into a searchable statewide or nationwide database tell us the same legal facts.

They don’t necessarily produce the same practical consequences.

One final thought lingers.

If the goal was simply to notify owners who might be subject to the new tax, why publish a searchable list at all? Why not just send notices directly to those affected, just as governments routinely do for property taxes, assessments and other obligations?  It’s been reported they did that, also – in addition.

I don’t know the answers to the questions surrounding that choice. There may be good reasons. But the question itself is worth asking because it highlights the distinction this episode exposed.

Maintaining public records is one function of government.  Curating and republishing those records in a way that identifies a particular class of citizens is another.  The underlying information may be exactly the same.  The purpose (and likely the consequences) are not.

Governments have long maintained public records. That’s one of their oldest and most important responsibilities.  Increasingly, they also have the ability to reorganize those records into entirely new products; searchable databases built around categories of people rather than parcels of land.

That capability didn’t exist when our recording system was created.  Today it does.  And before we accept that as the new normal, it’s worth asking a simple question: What public purpose is served by publishing a curated list that isn’t already served by maintaining the public record itself?

Update: As this blog goes to publish, three property owners have filed suit, alleging the properties they own are their primary residence and therefore were wrongly included in the database released to the public.

Update #2: On Monday, August 10, a judge has ordered NYC officials to take down the database containing 960,000 property and owner records, as well as pause rollout efforts while the lawsuit proceeds. More details here.

Until Next Time,

Mary Schuster
Chief Knowledge Officer
October Research, LLC