Westchester County Clerk Property Records: Full Guide
Go Back To Previous PageQuick answer: Westchester County doesn’t use ACRIS. Its property records are maintained by the Westchester County Clerk’s Land Records Division and are searchable through a separate portal called Westchester Records Online (WRO) at wro.westchesterclerk.com. You can search deeds and mortgages by owner name, address, or document number, but viewing full document images requires a free account, and pulling copies costs money. Property tax is a separate system entirely, split across your county, town, school district, and sometimes a village too.
What is the Westchester County Clerk, and why isn’t it ACRIS?
ACRIS is the New York City Department of Finance’s records system, and it only covers the five boroughs. Westchester is its own county with its own recording office, so none of its deeds, mortgages, or liens show up in ACRIS at all. If you’ve searched a Bronx property before and expect the same interface up here, you’re going to have a rough first ten minutes.
The Westchester County Clerk runs the Land Records Division out of the county courthouse in White Plains. It holds deeds going back to 1680 and mortgages recorded since 1950, all indexed and, for the most part, digitized.
How do you search Westchester property records online?
Go to Westchester Records Online (WRO). You can search the indexes for free without an account, by grantor/grantee name, current or prior owner, LLC or trust name, recorded date, document number, or book and page. That tells you whether something’s on file.
To actually view the document image, you need to register for a free WRO account. That’s not optional, and it’s the step most first-time searchers miss before wondering why every result looks blank. One mix-up worth knowing about: WRO is not the same system as PREP, which the Clerk’s office also runs. PREP prepares recording cover pages and tax forms for filing a new document; it does not search existing land records at all. If you land on PREP looking for a deed, you’re in the wrong tool.
If you’d rather skip the login screen entirely, the Clerk’s office keeps free public viewing terminals at 110 Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvd, Room 345, White Plains. You can search and view images there without an account, which is honestly the fastest option if you’re already in the county.
What does it cost to search or copy Westchester records online?
Searching the index yourself is free. Pulling copies isn’t. Per the official fee schedule, a standard copy costs $1.30 for the first two pages and $0.65 for each additional page, capped at $40. A certified copy is $5 for up to four pages, plus $1.25 per additional page.
A staff-run search of the index costs $5 per instrument.
Recording a deed yourself starts with a $45 statutory fee. You will also pay $5 per page. For residential property, add a $125 Real Property Transfer Report fee. None of that applies if you’re just looking up someone else’s deed, but it explains why the fee page reads as if it were written for lawyers rather than buyers.
Does the Westchester system have complaints people should know about?
The most common friction point isn’t a bug, it’s the county’s own layout: Westchester has 48 separate municipalities, each with its own assessment roll and, in some cases, its own local records quirks on top of the county-wide WRO. A search that works cleanly for a house in Yonkers can behave differently for one in Bedford, simply because you’re now crossing into a different assessing unit.
The other recurring snag is the registration wall. WRO lets you search for free, then stops you cold at the image, which trips up people who assume “search” means “read.” Budget five extra minutes to create the account before you actually need a document.
How are Westchester’s online records different from ACRIS?
ACRIS is fully free to view, including document images; no login required. WRO makes you register before it hands over an image. ACRIS is a unified system across the five boroughs. Westchester’s coverage spans 48 municipalities, so a name search may return results that need a second look to confirm which town the property actually lies in.
Both let you search by name, address, or document number, and both go back decades, but the free-versus-gated line is the first real difference buyers notice.
How does Westchester County property tax actually work?
This is the part that catches even experienced NYC buyers off guard. In the city, your property tax is a single bill from a single system. In Westchester, you can owe four or five different taxing jurisdictions on the same property, each setting its own rate.
A typical Westchester property tax bill includes: county tax, town or city tax, school district tax, and, if the property is within village limits, a separate village tax on top of the town tax. Some properties also carry special district charges for services such as fire protection, water, or sewer. The school district part usually dominates. It often makes up 60 to 70 percent of the total bill. School district lines often do not match town or village borders.
Because each of the 48 municipalities assesses independently and uses its own Residential Assessment Ratio to translate that assessment into a taxable value, two houses worth the same amount on opposite sides of a town line can carry meaningfully different Westchester County property tax totals. There’s no way to shortcut this; you check the specific town, village if applicable, and school district for the parcel you’re looking at.
Westchester County Government publishes historical rates and equalization data through its Property Tax Rates page, which is the closest thing to a single source of truth, even though it still requires you to drill into the right municipality.
What’s the fastest way to actually find a property’s records?
Start with the address or owner’s name in WRO to confirm that a deed exists and to get the document number. If you hit the registration wall and don’t want to make an account yet, note the document number and call or visit the Clerk’s office instead, since staff can pull it faster with a reference number in hand. For tax history specifically, skip WRO altogether and go straight to the town or city assessor’s office, since that’s a separate system from land records.
Westchester runs its own system, but if you’re also looking at property in NYC itself, the recording process works differently there. See our full ACRIS guide for how deeds, mortgages, and liens work across the five boroughs.
Buying in Westchester specifically, not NYC proper? The same instinct to check government records before closing still applies. See our due diligence guide for the equivalent city-side checks, most of which have a Westchester-side counterpart through the town or village.
Frequently asked questions
Is Westchester County part of ACRIS?
No. ACRIS only covers New York City’s five boroughs. Westchester runs its own separate system through the County Clerk, accessed via Westchester Records Online.
Do I need an account to search Westchester property records?
Not to search the index. You do need a free account to view actual document images on wro.westchesterclerk.com.
How far back do Westchester land records go?
Deeds are indexed back to 1680, and mortgages back to 1950, per the Land Records Division.
Why does my Westchester tax bill have multiple line items?
Because you’re taxed separately by the county, your town or city, your school district, and sometimes a village, all on the same property. That’s normal for Westchester, not an error.
Can I search Westchester property records for free in person?
Yes. The Clerk’s office has free public terminals at 110 Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvd, Room 345, White Plains, where you can search and view images without registering online.
Nicole Fishman Benoliel co-founded NestApple in 2017. She's a lawyer admitted to the New York bar - her law degree is from La Escuela Libre de Derecho in Costa Rica, with further study at IE Business School in Madrid and an LLM from Fordham in New York. She does not act in a legal capacity at NestApple; every client is referred to an attorney who handles real estate deals full time.
