Notice of Recording Order Issue – November 13-18, 2024 More Info

Attention Mining Customers:

You can now schedule appointments with the Recorder's Office outside of office hours for large volumes of documents to be recorded. Although an appointment is not required, if you have 100 or more documents to record, call and make an appointment today! Appointments can be made by calling the Recorder's Office in Anchorage at 907-269-8875 and in Fairbanks at 907-452-3521.

Recorder's Office Terminology

Notice:

Recorded and/or filed documents and ALL information contained within those instruments become the permanent public record and are available for public viewing and/or purchase.

The following are non-legal definitions of terms

Grantor/ Grantee Index	This is the official index of the statewide recording system database in alphabetical format. Grantor and Grantee names appearing on documents must be input into the index exactly as they appear on the document, consequently variations of names may exist. Searches may be performed within the statewide computer index based on district or statewide, as well as by name, legal description, date, book/page number, serial number or document type.
Index Code	As you review the index and pull up individual names or legal descriptions, you will notice different index codes for a variety of documents. These index codes help to identify specific types of documents. For example: LI signifies Lien documents; M refers to Mortgages, Deeds of Trusts and related document types; D refers to conveyance documents such as Quit Claim Deeds, Warranty Deeds, Trust Deeds; MI refers to Mining documents; MS refers to Miscellaneous type documents (documents which do not fall in to one of the other categories); PA for Power of Attorneys; FX for Financing Statements (Fixture Statements);
Legal Description	This is the real estate property description which is reflected as Lot, Block, Subdivision name, plat number, Survey number, or Meridian, Township, Range, Section (MTRS).
Location Index	Index based on the real estate property description such as: Lot, Block, Subdivision name, plat number, U.S. Land Survey Number; MTRS (Meridian, Township, Range, Section); Alaska State Land Survey Number; The location index with the State Recorder’s Office was not an official index prior to July 1996 and is provided as a courtesy index for our users. Legal descriptions may be researched by Plat Number, Subdivision Name, Survey Number, MTRS (Meridian, Township, Range Section).
Historical Book Records	Prior to establishing the statewide computerized database, recordings were logged into large, bound books in alphabetical order according to Grantor and Grantee names. These books constitute the historical book records of each recording district in the state.
Recording Districts	Unlike other states, Alaska is broken up into 34 recording districts which are centrally administered under a State Recorder. All recording districts use the same acceptance criteria, fee schedule, etc., for accepting documents into the public record.