Our mission at the Recorder’s office is to maintain public records according to the statutes of the State of Missouri and make them easily accessible for viewing by the public. We provide data on Real Estate transactions and historical perspective, Marriage Records, Military Service Records, Tax Liens, miscellaneous deeds and Fixture filings. (Uniform Commercial Codes are filed at the Missouri Secretary of State’s office.) See Secretary of State: http://www.sos.mo.gov/ucc/

Our earliest records, beginning 1839 through 1989, were hand-recorded in books. Beginning 1990 records were hand-recorded and database automated.

In June of 2004 in an effort to accomplish our mission a new state of the art automated system with document scanning for preserving records was implemented. The scanning system updates and provides easy accessibility to link records. Data information and images are available back to 1990.

We provide access to three public view stations, located in the Recorder’s office, available to the public at no charge. (Any copies made will apply to statutory fees.) For protection and maintenance, access to the internet website records is available by contract agreement only. See Online Service Agreement Form.

We updated our system in 2007 implementing PDF which allows you to print partial or entire documents within minutes from our Official Records webpage.

Since 1839 land documents had to be mailed or physically taken to the Recorder’s office to be recorded by hand. In January 2008 the Buchanan County Recorder’s office began electronic recording. Now, electronically, by scanning your original paper document it is transmitted to our office through a portal and payment made by ACH. The documents arrive at the Recorder’s office in seconds. They are examined and fully recorded or rejected, and returned to the submitter within minutes.

See E-Recording for information and application to electronically record documents.

Future plans include extending back data and images to 1980.