UCC Search: How to Find Liens on a Business

What a UCC filing is

When a business borrows against its equipment, inventory, receivables or almost anything other than real estate, the lender files a UCC-1 financing statement to put the world on notice that it has a security interest in those assets. “UCC” is the Uniform Commercial Code, the model law every state has adopted for this. The filing doesn’t prove the debt is still owed. It shows the lender claimed the collateral on a certain date, which sets its priority against other creditors.

You’d run a UCC search before lending to a company, buying its assets, buying the company itself, or just to see how much it has borrowed against. Equipment lessors file UCC-1s too, so a long list of filings isn’t always a bad sign. It might just mean leased forklifts.

Where to search

UCC filings go to the central filing office of the state where the debtor is “located”. For a registered company like an LLC or corporation, that’s the state where it was formed. So a Delaware LLC with all its assets in Texas has its UCC filings in Delaware. For an individual, it’s the state of their main residence. For other organizations, such as a general partnership, it’s their place of business, or their chief executive office if they have more than one.

The filing office is usually the secretary of state, and often the same office that runs the business entity search. But the UCC records are a separate index with their own search. Our UCC search by state page links to each state’s official search, with whether it’s free and what a UCC-1 costs to file.

Fixture filings (things attached to real estate, like a furnace) go in the real property records of the county where the land is. If you’re doing full due diligence on a company that owns property, search both.

How to search

1. Open the state’s UCC search. Many states offer a free online search and a paid certified one. Start with the free one.
2. Search by debtor name, using the exact legal name from the state’s business record. UCC searches use strict matching (the filing office’s “standard search logic”), so close isn’t good enough. Copy the name straight from the entity record.
3. Try variations too: with and without the ending, with and without punctuation, and any former names the entity record lists.
4. For each result, note the filing number, filing date, lapse date, secured party, and any amendments, continuations or termination.
5. Open or order the filing itself to read the collateral description.

Some states also let you search by secured party or filing number, which helps if you’re tracing a particular lender.

Reading a filing

A UCC record is short. The parts that matter:

• Debtor. This should be the exact legal name. If the name on the filing is wrong enough that a search under the correct name wouldn’t find it, the filing can be “seriously misleading” and not count. That’s why lenders are so careful about it.
• Secured party. The lender or lessor. Banks, SBA lenders, equipment finance companies and merchant cash advance providers all show up here.
• Collateral. Either specific (“one 2022 forklift, serial number…”) or blanket (“all assets of the debtor”). A blanket lien from a bank is normal for a term loan. Several blanket liens from cash-advance companies filed months apart is a pattern worth asking about.
• Filing type. UCC-1 is the original. A UCC-3 can be an amendment, continuation, assignment or termination. A termination means the lender released its claim. An original with no termination and a lapse date in the future is still live.
• Lapse date. Five years from filing unless continued.

Certified searches

If you need a search result for a closing or a court, order a certified search from the filing office. Its staff run the search under the official rules and send back a report, usually with copies of the filings. Each office sets its own fee. Law firms and title companies often use a search company to pull certified searches in several states at once, which makes sense when the debtor has registrations in more than one.

For anything less formal, the free online search is fine, and you can usually get copies of individual filings for a small fee.