County Records

County Records provides a wealth of information. Every property owner should access their property record to see if anything seems amiss.

The primary tool is PropertyMax. There you can find information about anyone's real and private property that has been recorded with the county. Clicking on Real Property brings up a search page with a menu on the left to aid searching. Most commonly you will search by Name or Address.

• The power is that if you enter just the street, all properties on the street will result. (select Contains rather than Starts with).

• You can also enter a Property ID (PID) of the form R600 015 00N XXXX; a truncated entry will return multiple properties. All Callawassie properties begin with R600 015 00N, where N is A, B, C, D, or E. If you know one property ID, simply remove a few numbers and find nearby properties.

• If your search results in several properties, click on any individual property record. A myriad of information appears including history ownership, the assessed market value, when a home was built, etc.

• On an individual property record, in the menu to the left, click on GIS to bring up a map with the property shaded in red. Choose whether you want to view a graphical map, or an aerial view. You can pan, zoom, copy, export as a picture, print, etc. There are tools to measure distance and areas; various layers are available to show such things as elevation contours, zoning, school districts, etc.

• In the Overview of the individual property record a sales disclosure section shows applicable deed filing locations, which can be used to access deeds using another tool provided by the register of deeds (see below).

Sales History can also be found in PropertyMax. Click on Sales in the property Max Search Page Menu, and complete the form. There are tricks you need to know.

• Enter a time frame; don't use the defaults as this will give all sales ever made.

• When entering the price range, the lower bound must be at least 3 digits, enter three zeroes, 000 for zeroI

• Enter the neighborhood. In our case, Callawassie Island, 960 and Callawassie Heron Point, 994 [sic, Heron Walk].

• Results include every type of property transfer: sales, foreclosures, quit claim deeds, estate recordings, etc. Often the price is an indicator of what type of transfer it was; you can always look up the deed as described elsewhere.