We find the right office, send the request, follow it until it comes back, and send it on to you the day it lands. You place the order and get on with the closing.
Most of the work on a lien letter is not the letter. It is knowing which office issues it, what that office wants this month, and calling them when it does not arrive.
On self-serve steps three and four are yours instead: we hand you the packet ready to print on your own letterhead, and you mail it and take the replies. Everything else is the same.
Property, parcel, parties, closing date. Before anything is mailed we put the parcel against the county's own record, so a transposed digit is caught here rather than by a borough clerk three weeks later.
Every municipality sends its letters somewhere different, and some require their own form. We keep that list current across hundreds of offices so nobody on your staff has to.
On managed, requests go out under our name as your agent. When an office is slow we call it, and what we were told goes on the order in the words we were told it, with the date — not "following up". On self-serve the letters are yours and so are the phone calls.
On managed we scan each one in against the letter it answers the day it reaches us, and it is yours to download from the order — one at a time or the whole file as a zip. Until then every letter's status is on the order at any hour, so chasing us is never the way to find out where something is. On self-serve the offices reply to you, so you scan them in and the file lives in the same place.
An inspection you have to arrange. A letter that will expire before your closing date. A borough that will not issue without a dye test. Early, while it is fixable.
You keep a funded account and every order draws on it — our fee, and on managed each office's fee too. No invoice to approve and nothing to chase. A statement every week showing what came in, what went out and to whom.
If the property changed hands in the last six months for a dollar, or was bought and re-sold inside a year, we say so on the order.
That pattern is usually innocent — a transfer between spouses, into a trust, out of an estate. Occasionally it is not. Either way it is the kind of thing you want to see before settlement rather than after, and no lien letter service raises it.
It costs you nothing. It is simply on the order when the county record shows it.
“Transferred 03/14/2026 for $1.00 — recorded four months ago.”
Flagged for closer inspection. The county's own stated reason is quoted alongside it, with the deed image linked when available.
Full routing for every municipality in both counties — municipal lien, sewer, water, tax certification, tax claim, occupancy and dye test, with each office's own form where it has one.
We read the county's own parcel record: deed book and page or instrument number, municipality, assessment detail, and in Westmoreland the owner of record and the recorded deed image. Allegheny publishes no owner name, so we do not show one.
We take orders elsewhere in Pennsylvania and build the routing as we go. Ask — if we cannot do it well, we will tell you rather than take the order.
You pay per order, and only for orders you place. There is no monthly minimum, no seat licence, and no charge for an account that sits idle between closings.
Municipal fees are never marked up on either tier. On managed we pay each office what it asks and that exact amount comes off your account — the order's disbursement schedule shows what went where, for your settlement statement. If an office charges more than last time we pay it and the difference is taken; if less, you are credited. On self-serve you write those checks yourself and we never touch that money.
Our fee draws on a balance you have funded in advance, so there is no invoice to approve and nothing to chase. We do not take cards, which is part of why the fee is what it is.
The difference is who licks the envelopes and who writes the checks. Both tiers get the same thing from us: which office issues it, which form that office wants, and what it charges this month.
The tracking screen is the same on both, but who fills it in is not. On managed the offices reply to us, so we record each letter as it comes back and scan the certificate in. On self-serve they reply to you — so the screen shows what you have recorded, and it is only as current as you keep it.
Take self-serve if you already have someone cutting checks and going to the post office, and what you actually want is for the routing to be right. Take managed if you would rather that stopped being anyone's job at your firm.
Expedited buys speed on our side only. It cannot make a borough answer sooner, and we will not pretend otherwise — some offices state in writing that they do not expedite at all, and where they do we tell you before you tick the box.
You fund an account before we place work — normally $500 to open — and every charge draws on it. On managed that is our fee when you place the order and each office's fee when its check is written; on self-serve it is our fee and nothing else. You can see the balance, what is committed, and every line that has ever hit the account, at any time, and a statement arrives every week with the same thing in writing.
We do it this way because the alternative is us writing checks to boroughs with our own money and invoicing you afterwards, which means chasing law firms for money and pricing that risk into the fee. This is cheaper for you and simpler for us.
It is a prepayment, not an escrow, and we do not hold it in trust. We never debit your account — every transfer is one you send. Ask for the unspent balance back whenever you like, for any reason, and it comes back within ten business days less anything already committed to orders in flight. Nothing is forfeited for sitting idle.
You can open one yourself in about a minute — firm name, your details, a password. We email you a link to confirm the address and you are in. There is no sign-up fee and no minimum: you fund the account when you are ready to place work, and not before.
New accounts start on the managed service. Self-serve letters go out in your firm's own name, so we switch that on after a short conversation rather than from a form — call or write and it is done the same day.
Lien Request LLC
P.O. Box 123
Murrysville, PA 15668