DeedWatch guides
Yes — a free property alert service exists, and it is run by your county. Most counties that offer deed alerts offer them as a free recording notification service (your county may call it a property fraud alert or a title alert): you enroll your name with the county recorder, and the county emails you when a document is recorded under that name. The same alert is what subscription companies repackage and sell back to homeowners — the county version costs $0.
It is one service under several names. A recording notification service, a property fraud alert, and a county title alert are the same machinery: the county indexes every recorded deed, mortgage, and lien by the names on it, compares those names against your enrollment, and notifies you on a match — usually by email, typically within 24 hours to a few days of recording. Counties run it on their own sites or on platforms they have chosen, including Fidlar's Property Fraud Alert, the iCounty Notification Service, Tyler's Document Alert, and statewide systems like Georgia's FANS. Our guide to how recording notifications work explains the machinery in full.
Where the service is offered by government, it is offered free — it is a public-safety function, not a product. Some states made it mandatory: Florida's § 28.47 required every clerk of the circuit court to operate a free recording notification service by July 1, 2024, Illinois and Utah likewise require county recorders to provide opt-in notification, and Georgia's clerks built one statewide portal (FANS) covering all 159 counties. Arizona's county recorders launched a coordinated title-alert system at the start of 2025. If a website asks for a monthly fee to "alert" you about your deed, you are being charged for a notification your county most likely sends for nothing — see the honest math on paid title monitoring.
The alert fires after a document is recorded — so does the paid subscription's. It is notification, not prevention: recording offices must accept documents that meet filing requirements, so the model is catch it fast and unwind it fast. The FTC has been explicit that paid "title lock" services do not lock, freeze, or prevent anything either. The difference between the county alert and the paid version is the price and who sends it — not the protection.
Yes. In most counties that offer deed alerts, the alert is a free service run by the county recorder, register of deeds, or clerk of court. Enroll on the county's own site or its chosen platform — never through a site charging a subscription for the same notification.
Yes — "property fraud alert" is one of the names counties give the same recording notification service. "Title alert" and "recording notification service" mean the same machinery.
Some counties offer none yet. The fallback that works everywhere is a scheduled deed self-check: pull your own record once or twice a year and confirm it is clean. Our deed self-check guide walks through the routine, and our state pages note which counties lack a service.
You need one enrollment per county. A property across the county line needs its own enrollment in that county's system, even if you live elsewhere.
Start with the county: check your county free, enroll every name variation, and the alert is working. The full set of state-by-state destinations is in our guides and state pages.