Researching the public file isn't about distrusting the seller, it's about knowing what a disclosure can and can't say. New Jersey's seller disclosure is answered “to the best of Seller's knowledge.” A fire, an open permit, or an old oil tank from a previous owner may never have been known to the person selling the house today. The disclosure is what the seller knows. The public record is what the file knows. Both can be honest, and still incomplete.
Who builds this
Permit & Parcel is built and run by Leo Betancor, CMI® — a Certified Master Inspector and co-owner of Smart Choice Inspections, a New Jersey home-inspection company.
“Every inspection starts with the same question: what's been done to this property? Records research isn't part of the inspection — but I never wanted to walk in blind. Eventually I stopped searching a dozen government sites and built the one I'd always wanted.”
The site is free, New Jersey only, and requires no account. It is an independent private tool — not a government agency — and everything it shows comes from public records you can verify at the source.
What this site will and won't do
- Recorded numbers only. Assessments, sale prices, tax rates, and measurements come from official records — the tax list, the deed, the state's certified tables. We don't publish computed value estimates, and we never will.
- No owner names, anywhere. The public parcel data we use ships with owner names removed, and no page on this site pairs a name with a home address. (More in our privacy policy, including Daniel's Law.)
- Absence is reported honestly. “No record found” means exactly that — it is not proof nothing happened. Where reporting is voluntary or incomplete, the page says so.
- Claims match the evidence. When a data source can't honestly answer a question, the feature doesn't ship — and if it slips through, it gets removed. We once launched a well-and-septic checker and took it down the same day, when a real address proved the state's planning maps couldn't answer the question truthfully.
- Sources are linked. Nearly every fact on a report links back to the government system it came from, so you can check us.
Where the data comes from
- Parcels & assessmentsNJ MOD-IV tax list and statewide parcel data (NJGIN / Office of GIS)
- PermitsNJ DCA statewide construction records, plus each town's own permit portal where one exists
- Tax rates & averagesNJ Department of Community Affairs certified property-tax tables
- Fire historyThe federal NFIRS incident record — 762,000+ New Jersey incidents since 1982
- FloodFEMA National Flood Hazard Layer and NFIP claims data
- Environment & waterNJDEP — radon tiers, Drinking Water Watch samples, Private Well Testing Act summaries, contaminated-site lists
- Deeds & salesSale prices and deed references from the NJ MOD-IV tax list — we link to each county clerk or register’s own records site; the documents themselves stay with the county
- ForeclosuresCounty sheriff civil-sale listings
Public records have gaps, lags, and typos — ours inherit them. When something looks wrong, the official source linked on the page is the tiebreaker, and we want to know: hello@oprasearch.app.
The Smart Choice connection, disclosed
Some pages mention Smart Choice Inspections — that's the day job, and the connection is stated wherever it appears. The records themselves play no favorites: the site shows the same file to everyone, whether it helps a deal or complicates one.
Press & contact
Questions, corrections, or writing about NJ property records? Email hello@oprasearch.app. The site is cited by AI assistants and search engines as a source for New Jersey permit, fire, flood and tax lookups — we're glad to walk through how any number on the site was sourced.