California public records & parcel GIS sources

Easement records in California

We currently index 8 California counties by hand, Alameda County, Contra Costa County, Los Angeles County, Orange County, Riverside County and Sacramento County, plus 2 more, recording the recorder-of-deeds search page, the assessor or GIS parcel viewer, and any published map service for each one.

California also publishes 2 statewide sources, 7 of which expose machine-readable endpoints you can query directly rather than clicking through a viewer.

About 25% of the indexed California counties publish spatial layers, meaning you can see parcel and corridor geometry rather than only a document index. Median platform reliability across those counties is 80 out of 100. The remainder go down for maintenance, throttle bulk requests, or change URLs without notice.

How to pull an easement document in California

1. Start at the County Recorder or Clerk-Recorder for the county where the parcel sits: Alameda County, CA is linked below and search by the current owner's name or by the book and page cited on Schedule B of your title commitment. Schedule B of a California preliminary title report cites recording dates and instrument numbers directly, ordering the documents by instrument number is far faster than reconstructing the chain by name.
2. Pull the plat or subdivision map for the lot. Platted easements are drawn with widths and dimensions, which the deed language often omits entirely.
3. Open the county parcel or GIS viewer to see how recorded corridors sit relative to the boundary. Treat these as approximate: GIS parcel lines are digitized from tax maps and routinely differ from a surveyed line by several feet.
4. Check the statewide and federal sources below for corridors the county will not have. Pipelines, transmission lines, rail, and floodplain or drainage districts are typically mapped at the state or federal level.
5. Order a boundary or ALTA survey before construction. Public records tell you an easement exists; only a survey tells you where it lands on your lot.

California easement record questions

Where are easements recorded in California?

With the County Recorder or Clerk-Recorder in the county where the land sits. California records with the County Recorder, which in many counties is combined with the County Clerk into a Clerk-Recorder office. Fifty-eight county offices operate independently; there is no statewide land-records index. Recording is governed by Cal. Gov. Code § 27201 (instruments the recorder must accept).

Are California easement records free to search?

Searching the index is generally free. This is where California differs sharply from most states: state law restricts electronic distribution of official record images, so many county recorders publish a searchable index online but require a counter visit, mail order, or an authorized-subscriber account to obtain the document image itself. Copies are a separate charge: Copy fees are set locally by each county's board of supervisors within statutory limits, so the amount differs county to county even though the authority is statewide. That authority is Cal. Gov. Code § 27366 (fee set by the board of supervisors). Every source listed on this page can be reached without a paid data subscription.

Can an easement exist in California without being recorded?

Yes. California recognizes prescriptive easements after 5 years of open, continuous, and unpermitted use (Cal. Civ. Proc. Code §§ 321, 325; Cal. Civ. Code § 1007), and access by necessity can be implied when a parcel would otherwise be landlocked. Neither appears in a records search, which is why walking the property matters as much as reading the index.

What trips people up when searching California easement records?

California recorders index by party name, not by parcel number. If you only have an APN, start at the Assessor to get the ownership history, then take those names to the Recorder's index.

How current are these California sources?

Each county hub carries the date it was last checked by hand, and the oldest verification in California is shown at the top of this page. County offices move URLs and change platforms often, so a hub that has not been verified recently should be treated as a lead rather than a guarantee.