Michigan records are handled by LARA for business entities, the Department of Treasury for unclaimed property, MDOC's OTIS for offenders, and county registers of deeds for property. Court access is largely county-by-county across circuit and district courts.
Michigan's records landscape is defined by two things: a business and licensing department that does the work most states split across agencies, and a property tax system rewritten by a 1994 ballot measure. LARA, the Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs, runs the corporations database, the UCC index, and the professional licensing verification system in one place, so an entity search and a contractor or nurse license check start from the same agency — the LARA license lookup is the tool we point to on our license lookup pages.
The Freedom of Information Act, 1976 PA 442, gives any person the right to inspect public records with a five-business-day response deadline and a single ten-business-day extension. Michigan's notable quirk is who is not covered: the Legislature and the Governor's office are statutorily exempt from FOIA, an exclusion shared by very few states and a recurring subject of reform bills. Local governments are fully covered, must publish a written FOIA procedures and guidelines document, and must offer an internal appeal to the head of the public body before litigation.
Property records are held by 83 county Registers of Deeds for deeds and mortgages and by city or township assessors for valuation — assessment in Michigan is municipal, not county, which surprises researchers used to a single county assessor. Michigan is a disclosure state: a property transfer affidavit is filed on every transfer and the state and county real estate transfer taxes are computed on the sale price. Proposal A caps annual taxable value growth at the lesser of 5% or inflation, and the cap resets — 'uncaps' — the year after a transfer of ownership, so a recent sale usually produces a jump in tax bills that has nothing to do with improvements. Our property owner lookup guide covers reading these records.
Court access is county-by-county across circuit, district, and probate courts, with MiCOURT Case Search covering participating courts rather than all of them. Michigan does, however, offer something most states withhold: ICHAT, the State Police Internet Criminal History Access Tool, is a public name-based conviction search anyone can run online for a flat fee. Combined with MDOC's free OTIS offender tracking system for current prisoners, parolees, and probationers, the statewide criminal picture is better than the fragmented court dockets suggest.
Last Updated: September 2026 · Reviewed quarterly by the Searchadex editorial team.
Assessor data free; deed images often via paid county portals.
No unified statewide portal; access varies by county.
Free entity and resident agent lookup via LARA.
Genealogy death index free; certified copies fee-based.
ICHAT history fee-based; OTIS offender lookup free.
Free status, ballot, and clerk lookup.
Free name, ZIP, and proximity search.
Free search; participates in MissingMoney.
No. Both are excluded from Michigan's FOIA by statute, so requests to them have no legal force. Records they sent to or received from a covered agency can often still be obtained by requesting them from that agency instead.
The city, township, or village assessor sets assessed and taxable values; the county Register of Deeds records the deeds and mortgages, and the county equalization department reconciles values across units. If you want a parcel's value you go to the municipality, and if you want the instrument you go to the county.
It means the property changed ownership, so the Proposal A cap that limited annual increases to 5% or inflation was reset and taxable value snapped up to the state equalized value. Seeing an uncapping is a reliable sign of a transfer in the prior year, even before the deed shows up in your search.
Yes. OTIS, the Offender Tracking Information System from the Department of Corrections, is free and covers current prisoners, parolees, and probationers with photos, offense details, and earliest release dates. Conviction history beyond current supervision is a paid ICHAT search.
Official portals verify a single record. For compiled multi-source reports, these paid tools go further. Not government sources.
People search, contact info, and background reports.
Reverse phone, email, and people lookup.
Background checks and public-records reports.
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