Search Packages
Every package is the same search performed by the same certified abstractors. The only variable is the term: how many years of recorded activity we read against the parcel. On mineral rights, that choice matters more than on any other search we sell.
Recent leases, sales, and refinances
$250
Covers the last two decades of recorded activity against the parcel. The common choice when a recent lease, sale, or reservation is the question and the chain before that is already known.
Most ordered
Parcels with past leasing activity
$375
Reaches back far enough to catch the leasing activity and deed reservations of an earlier drilling cycle, which is often where a severance that still binds the parcel was created.
Long-severed minerals and unresolved ownership
$625
The deepest window we sell. Appropriate when the minerals are believed to have been severed generations ago, when a parcel has been split or assembled over time, or when nobody can say who owns what below the surface.
Prices are for residential property in any U.S. state. Large acreage, metes-and-bounds tracts, and multi-parcel searches are quoted individually — send us the details and we will price the scope before anything is ordered.
Picking a Term
The useful question is not "how many years" but "when would the severance have happened." Minerals are usually separated from the surface during a period when somebody thought they were worth separating: a drilling boom, a large ranch or farm being broken up, an estate being divided among heirs. A search that stops short of that period will not find the instrument that did it.
Where a tract has been split, assembled, or passed through an estate, the reservations usually date from those events. That is the case for the 50 year term, and it is the one we most often recommend when nobody can say whether the minerals were ever severed.
If you tell us the address, we will look at what we can see of the parcel's history and tell you which term we would order. There is no charge for that conversation.
A mineral rights search reports what was recorded against the parcel in the term searched. It is not a mineral title opinion and does not decide who owns the minerals today. It is not a title commitment or a policy of title insurance. It does not report well permits, production, or completion records, which are held by state oil and gas regulators rather than by the county recorder, and it does not value an interest or a royalty.
It also cannot show an interest that was never filed here. Mineral interests fractionalize through inheritance, and when an owner dies the interest passes whether or not anything is recorded in the county where the land sits — probate is frequently opened in the state where that person lived instead. Recording and indexing practice varies by county, and an instrument indexed under a grantor name may not surface under the parcel it belongs to. Where the stakes justify it, pair the search with counsel licensed in that state.
Common Questions
Certified abstractors search the county land records against your parcel and report the mineral conveyances, reservations, and leases found of record, with a copy of every recorded instrument attached. Order online in minutes, or tell us about the parcel and we will help you pick the search term.
Questions? Call 877-848-5337 ext. 138 or email info@afxllc.com