I work for a not-for-profit that builds new homes on vacant land and also rehabs existing properties and therefore I have to do a bunch of research on parcels of property and I figured I’d share how to track down a bunch of information using the publicly available websites. In this blog post I describe: How to look up the legal description of a property. First you need to know the property’s PIN, which I describe here. Once you have the PIN move on to step 1…
Step 1: Go to the website of the Cook County Recorder of Deeds at: cookrecorder.com. This website has all the public real estate documents from modern times in Cook County. Any time a mortgage has been taken out, or a property has been transferred, there’s paperwork, and it’s all available for search on this site by PIN number.
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| Cook County Recorder of Deeds Website |
Step 2: Click on “Search Records” in the horizontal bar at the top of the page. It will take you to the following:
Step 3: Click on “Click here to access the 20/20 Perfect Vision i2 search portal.” Or you can click on my link.
Step 4: Enter the PIN at the top of the page and click “Search.”
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| Cook County Recorder of Deeds 20/20 Perfect Vision Search Portal |
Step 5: The resulting page will give you the list of documents available. Click on any of the hyperlinked (underlined) text on one of the documents.
Step 6: Click on “View Images” in the right pane of the window. This will open up a pop up window (if you have a pop-up blocker you may need to adjust your settings to allow this site to open up pop ups).
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| Cook County Recorder of Deeds Search Results > View Images |
Step 7: Search through the document looking for the properties legal description. In this case it was on page 2. You have to look around the “Unofficial Copy” watermark that floats over the page but you can adjust the zoom settings and window size to see what you need.
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| Legal Description compliments of publically accessible documents |
See my other Cook County property information postings:
- How to look up a Cook County property PIN (Property Index Number)
- How to look up a Property Owner’s Name in Cook County
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