Mortgage

A mortgage is the recorded instrument by which real property secures a debt: the borrower grants the lender an interest in the property as collateral for the note, and recording establishes the lien's priority. The recorded trail — mortgages, assignments as loans trade between holders, satisfactions at payoff — is the public skeleton of a property's financing history, including amounts and dates.

Reading the trail: open mortgages of record show what debt encumbers the property (or was never formally discharged); origination dates and amounts sketch leverage history; and gaps have meanings — a property with no recorded mortgage may be unlevered, or financed at the entity level where property records cannot see.