How to Find Property Cards in Sterling, MA

Property Cards are a great way to jump start your house history research. They provide an overview of your house with information such as the year built and most importantly, recent ownership history.

Normally Property Cards, often called Field Cards, are very easy to find. You can typically Google
{Town}, {State} and Assessor Database to quickly pull up the database that contains the Property Cards. But in Sterling, MA it’s not that simple. The database is hidden inside another database.

What is a Property Card?

But first, let’s briefly explain what a Property Card is. Property Cards are a summary of information about your house that is used to calculate your real estate taxes. They can be very detailed with a lot of information about the structure of the house, the number of rooms, the size of the lot etc. It also includes historical information such as recent sale data, when the house was built and sometimes even building permit lists. And of course it shows the valuation of your house and land that was used to calculate the tax rate.

While all of the information in a Property Card is interesting, our first step is to gather the most recent sale data which includes your deed’s book and page number. This allows us to go directly your current deed rather than having to do a name search when starting our deed research. Bottom line – it’s just quicker.

Where to Find Sterling Property Cards

The Property Cards in Sterling are hidden inside the GIS Map Database. You can get to it from the Assessor’s page on the Town Hall website. Look at the left-hand menu where is says Assessor’s Property Maps (GIS). Click into that.

Now you are in the GIS Map database. In the search box at the top, type your address. In this case I’ll use the address of the Sterling Historical Society – 7 Pine Street. And then press enter. A little thumbnail of the property will come up. And over on the right you’ll see a large map of Sterling. Click into the property thumbnail.

Next you’ll see a more detailed column on the left displaying information about the property. and you’ll see a more zoomed in map. By the way, you can zoom in and out on the map to get as broad or as detailed as you like.

Under the photo of the house there is a section called Documents. It shows:

• Vision Property Card
• CAI Property Card
• Building Photos

Most towns have one Property Card available to the public but Sterling has two! The Vision Property Card is more detailed and less pretty. The CAI Property Card is simpler and easier to read but has less information. You can download both to your computer.

The Vision Property Card

The Vision Property Card has two pages. On the first page you’ll find the deed Book and Page number and the sale date. You’ll want to note both of those on your deed chart.

On the second page you’ll find the year built and a photo. In this case the year built, according to the town, is 1820. It’s not unusual to find different year built information in other documents. Use this simply as a guideline. You will also see Effective Year Built. That means renovations have been done and the house has been updated.

The CAI Property Card

The CAI Property Card is a much more simplified document. It is one page and you will quickly find the sale history information and the approximate year built.

There you have it. You can now locate not one, but two different Property Cards for your home in Sterling. Save the book and page number for the deed to your house so that you can get started on your deed research. If you see more than one sale in the recent sale information, be sure to record all the information.

Now head to the House History Guide for Sterling to find lots of resources for researching your house!