Land Records FAQs (click on boxes for answers)

Mailing Address

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Clark County GIS
ATTN: Land Records
PO Box 5000
Vancouver WA 98666-5000

Property Ownership Updates

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Please provide a photocopy of the Death Certificate along with a photocopy of the Probate’s Declaration of Distribution to the Land Records Office. If no probate is required, please provide a photocopy of the filed Will.

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Please provide a photocopy of the Death Certificate to the Land Records Office. Include your property account/identification number in your correspondence.

If only the deceased spouse is listed in our record:
Land Records will also need the original Deed OR a recorded Community Property Agreement OR a Will that has been filed with the County Clerk.

If the property is listed to a Trust:
Land Records will also need the Trust documents to determine how it directs the ownership to be changed upon a Trustee’s death.

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Please provide a photocopy of the Legal Name Change order to the Land Records Office. Include your property account/identification number in your correspondence.

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Please provide a copy of your marriage certificate to the Land Records Office. Include your property account/identification number in your correspondence and the name you are using now.

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Please provide a photocopy of your Decree of Dissolution to the Land Records Office. If the Decree refers to other documents for details of property distribution, please include them as well. Include your property account/identification number in your correspondence.

But I refinanced the property in just my name, why is my spouse still listed on the property record?
Refinancing property does not change ownership. Deeds of Trust and Reconveyances are financial documents only.

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Land Records recommends that you enlist the aid of a real property attorney or title company to ensure all your legal needs concerning this transaction are met. If you are recording a deed, please see instructions on the Auditor’s website. If an Excise Affidavit is required by the Treasurer before recording a deed, please see instructions on the Treasurer’s website.

Parcel / Property Updates

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This figure is arrived at in one of three ways (listed in order of priority):
1) Your deed or a survey specified a precise acreage for your parcel.
2) Your parcel’s legal description is detailed enough for Land Records to calculate the acreage.
3) The mapped size of your parcel.

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Clark County GIS compiles address data but does not assign addresses to properties. Please contact the addressing authority (typically the planning or community development department) for your property’s jurisdiction. For unincorporated Clark County, contact the Community Development Department at 564-397-2375.

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The approval process does not in and of itself cause the taxlots to be updated. You will need to either record a document with the Auditor’s Office or submit a Lot Reconfiguration Request to the Land Records Office.

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To determine if the resulting parcels are legal lots, you should contact the building department in the property’s jurisdiction. For properties in unincorporated Clark County, contact the Community Development Department at 564-397-2375. If you wish to divide your parcel, or adjust the boundaries of parcels you own, for tax purposes, you may submit a Lot Reconfiguration Request to the Land Records Office.

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If you wish to combine your parcels for tax purposes, you may submit a Combination Request to the Land Records Office.

Land Use - Easements - Property Lines

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Locating property lines and determining property encroachments are best handled by a Professional Land Surveyor. If a dispute arises and you have difficulty reaching an agreement, we recommend enlist the aid of Community Mediation Services. They can be reached at 564-334-5862 or online at www.mediationclarkcounty.org.

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Determining the location of property lines on the ground and in relation to other physical features is best performed by a licensed Professional Land Surveyor. There are several land surveying companies in the area and you can easily find them online. We do not make recommendations regarding specific surveyors.

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Please note that County staff are not permitted to provide legal advice.

We recommend you enlist the aid of a real property attorney or title company in determining what parties need to be involved in relinquishing an easement that involves multiple parcels.

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Our easements records are very limited. The first place to look is in your deed, to see if one is described there. Second, check your title report as title companies have much more complete records of easements and will have listed them there. Third, check on the Property Information Center to see if there are any subdivisions or surveys. If there are, view the image to see if any easements are delineated. Be aware that, even if you find nothing in any of these places, an easement could still exist (there’s just no practical way of researching them).

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Questions concerning what you can build on your property should be directed to the building department of your property’s jurisdiction. For properties in unincorporated Clark County, contact the Community Development Department at 564-397-2375.

Recording

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Documents listed on the “Auditor Docs” tab in the search results page of the Property Information Center are there because the property account/identification number that you are looking at was listed on the face of the document. If the property account/identification number was omitted or the incorrect one was put on the document, or the parcel it describes doesn’t exist yet, the document will not show up here.

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The current backlog on parcel maintenance is approximately 6 weeks.

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Following final approval of your project by the appropriate municipal jurisdiction, please follow the steps on outlined on the Plat Tax Collection Process form to get your project recorded at the County. Due to recent changes in state law per SL 1283, advance taxes will no longer be collected.

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Ownership updates generally take place a week or two following the recording of the deed. If there is a problem with the deed, you, your attorney or your title company will be contacted about correcting the error.

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Documents are recorded with the County Auditor’s Office or the County Clerk’s Office. Contact either office for retrieval of the desired document.

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Documents are recorded with the County Auditor’s Office. Please contact them at 564-397-2208 for information on the requirements for recording a deed. Document recording instructions are available here.

Q - Flag

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When you see a “Q” flag on a property record it means that Land Records has a document that we are unable to process for some reason. It could be a problem with the legal description, or that the grantors don’t match who we have as owner, or other issue.

Full Legal Description

Other Questions

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Document preparation is best handled by a title company, real property attorney, or the agency requesting the document.

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The Current Use program is administered by the County Assessor’s Office. Please contact them at current.use@clark.wa.gov or 564-397-2391 if you have questions.

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Simply complete a Mailing Address Change and submit it to the County Assessor’s Office.

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Please contact the department listed in each document’s record. Contact information for each department can be found on the County website.

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You can access these images by way of the Property Information Center. Once you have called up a property look in the center column under the “Land Data” heading; any plats, short plats, or surveys will be shown there.
 

  • To view a scanned image of the plat or survey, simply click on the name of the plat or survey and an information box will be displayed. Near the bottom of the information box will contain links to the scanned image(s), in both TIF and PDF format.
  • You can also locate and view survey records and plats on the “Surveyor’s Office Records and Plats” site on MapsOnline. Simply zoom in to your area of interest and use the “Identify” tool to query the surveys that you are interested in. The query results include a link to the scanned image(s).
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Land Records can assist with lots created after 1980. Lot-creation dates prior to 1980 cannot be precisely determined. Land Records can perform a cursory examination of some old map sets and possibly provide a date range. A sales history from a title company is the best place to obtain this information.

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Please contact the County Assessor’s Office at 564-397-2391 for questions regarding the value that has been placed on your property.