Search Mercer County Clerk Records

Mercer County Clerk Overview

The Mercer County Clerk is Paula Sollami Covello, who has served since January 2006 and was elected to a fifth term in 2025. The office files and records all documents concerning real-estate ownership and transfer, registers small-business trade names, accepts U.S. passport applications, issues county and veteran identification cards, swears in notaries, and carries out election duties. It also maintains a public record room where title searchers, attorneys, and the public can view property history.

This is a county constitutional office, established under the New Jersey Constitution. It is not the same as the statewide Superior Court Clerk's Office, which handles court files. The Clerk's land records are the go-to source for deeds, mortgages, and property history in Mercer County.

The office has also modernized its record systems over the years. The Clerk has implemented electronic recording of land records, preserved historic land documents in the Clerk's record library, and created online systems for public record searches. That history matters for researchers, because Mercer's recorded property documents stretch back nearly two centuries and are now searchable in part through the public portal. Title searchers, genealogists, and historians all use the record room, which holds maps of the county's twelve municipalities along with minor and major subdivisions.

Mercer County Clerk Contact

The Clerk's main office and record room are in downtown Trenton. The record room is open to any interested citizen, attorney, title searcher, or historian for research during business hours.

Searching Mercer County Land Records

The Clerk offers an official online land-records search. It lets you look up recorded documents by party name, document type, date range, consideration amount, property details, instrument number, book and page, town, and lot and block. The record room covers documents affecting Mercer property since 1838, and maps of the county's twelve municipalities are on file with subdivisions.

The official search is the Clerk's public land-records portal.

You can search through the Mercer County Clerk public land-records search.

The portal returns recorded instruments with flags for replaced or correction records. The table below shows the main search fields.

Staff cannot conduct a title search for you, but they can familiarize the public with the computerized recording and indexing system. The portal also flags records that have been replaced or corrected, and it marks certain from-party records that are not verified. When you read results, a flag such as R for a replaced record or C for a correction tells you the document history is not simple, and you may need to open the full image to understand it. For a complete title picture, most people hire a title company or a professional searcher rather than rely on a single name search.

How to Get a Copy of Your Deed

Getting a deed copy is straightforward. You can come into the office for copies, or send a written request by mail. The in-office rate is lower than the written-request rate. The steps below cover both routes.

1. Identify the property by owner name, address, or book and page.
2. Search the public portal or visit the record room to confirm the document.
3. For an in-office copy, request the pages at the counter.
4. For a mailed copy, send a written request to the Clerk's Office with payment.
5. Make checks payable to the Mercer County Clerk, using pre-printed checks.

The written-request route is handy if you cannot visit in person. Send the request to the Clerk's Office at 209 South Broad Street with the document details and payment. Because the office processes a high volume of recordings and copies, including the property details, such as the book and page, helps staff find the exact deed faster. For a current deed after a sale, the recording may take some time to appear, so allow a window before you expect the final recorded copy.

Mercer County Clerk Fees

The Clerk charges per page for copies and sets recording fees for documents. Copy rates differ between in-office and written requests. Recording fees depend on the document type and the number of pages.

Fees over $10,000 must be paid by certified or bank check, and out-of-state checks are not accepted by the office.

Property Alert and Fraud Monitoring

The Clerk offers a free Property Alert service. Once registered, you receive an email alert whenever a document with your name or property description is recorded in the Clerk's Office. This helps catch potential deed fraud or unexpected filings early. It is a modern tool layered on top of the recording system, and the Clerk has invested in electronic recording and online search over the years.

You can register through the Mercer County Property Alert service.

Registration takes only a few minutes and gives ongoing notice without a repeat search. It is a sensible step for any property owner who wants to monitor their records. Deed fraud, where someone records a false transfer of a home, is rare but serious, and an early alert can make the difference in catching it. The service does not stop a recording on its own, but it tells you quickly so you can act. For owners of multiple properties, it offers a low-effort way to keep watch across all of them at once.

Passports, IDs, Notaries, and Elections

The County Clerk does more than land records. It accepts U.S. passport applications, with the passport office at the courthouse on South Broad Street. It issues county and veteran identification cards and swears in notary applicants. On the election side, the office prints ballots, issues vote-by-mail ballots, counts machine votes, and posts results. New Jersey now accepts vote-by-mail applications online, which the Clerk has noted as a recent service update. These services make the Clerk's counter a busy place, so knowing which line you need saves time. A passport applicant, a property researcher, and a voter all come to the same office for very different reasons. The land-record fee changes are also worth noting for higher-value transactions, since the realty transfer fee on deeds with large consideration changed in 2025.

County Clerk vs Superior Court Clerk

It is worth repeating the split, because it trips people up. The County Clerk handles land records, trade names, passports, IDs, notaries, and elections. The Superior Court Clerk's Office, a separate statewide Judiciary office, handles court files, closed cases, foreclosures, and judgments. If you need a deed, you want the County Clerk. If you need a closed court case file or a certified court copy, you want the Superior Court Clerk's Office. For that side, see the Superior Court Clerk page. A simple test helps: if the document was recorded against a property, it is a County Clerk record, and if it was filed in a lawsuit, it is a court record held through the Judiciary. Getting this right the first time avoids a wasted trip to the wrong office in downtown Trenton, where the two clerks sit in different buildings only a short walk apart.

Related Mercer County Searches

See Mercer County public records for OPRA requests, the Surrogate's Court for estate matters, the Superior Court Clerk for court copies, and court records for case searches.