4 counties indexed. ArcGIS FeatureServer and MapServer URLs, with supported search fields per layer.
| County | Endpoints | Searchable fields | Status | Action |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Brown County | 1 | Parcel ID · Owner Name 1 · Owner Name 2 +2 | LIVE | OPEN |
| Dane County | 1 | Parcel Number · Owner Name · Co-Owner Name +3 | LIVE | OPEN |
| Milwaukee County | 1 | Tax Key (parcel identifier) · Parcel Key · Owner Name (Primary) +5 | LIVE | OPEN |
| Waukesha County | 1 | Tax Key Number · Owner Name (Full) · Owner Name 1 +3 | LIVE | OPEN |
Wisconsin has 72 counties, each with a Register of Deeds and a Real Property Lister responsible for maintaining parcel records. The Wisconsin Land Information Program (WLIP), administered by the Department of Administration's Division of Intergovernmental Relations, provides over nine million dollars annually to counties for land records modernization and requires all 72 counties to maintain digital parcel layers meeting a standardized format. Wisconsin's statewide parcel initiative reached a milestone in June 2024 with the V10 project, which aggregated all county digital parcel datasets into a single statewide GIS layer of 3.56 million parcels. The four counties in the atlas — Dane, Milwaukee, Waukesha, and Brown — each maintain their own ArcGIS server with owner name exposed on the public REST layer, making Wisconsin one of the more REST-accessible states in the Midwest.
The WLIP framework is what distinguishes Wisconsin from comparable Midwest states: all 72 counties participate, funding comes from Register of Deeds recording fees retained at the county level, and DOA enforces a standardized 'Searchable Format' for parcel data submissions. WLIA (Wisconsin Land Information Association) is a professional organization founded in 1987 representing county land information officers, surveyors, and GIS staff. The PLSS (Public Land Survey System) grid — townships, ranges, and sections — is deeply embedded in Wisconsin land descriptions and shows up in parcel attributes as TOWNSHIP fields. PLSS section corners are maintained by counties and submitted to the DOA statewide database as part of WLIP requirements. Most Wisconsin counties self-host ArcGIS Server for their parcel layer. The statewide V10 aggregated layer from the DOA is available for download but is not a live queryable REST endpoint — county-direct endpoints are still the correct source for real-time owner and address queries.
Wisconsin parcel identifiers are called Tax Keys (or Tax Key Numbers) in most counties, not APN. Dane County uses PARCELNO (a 12-digit number). Milwaukee and Waukesha counties use TAXKEY. Brown County uses PARCELID. All four refer to the same concept — the county-assigned property identifier used for tax billing — but the field name and format differ. Dane County's 12-digit PARCELNO encodes municipality, section, and parcel components in the PLSS-derived numbering scheme. Milwaukee's TAXKEY is an 8-digit numeric string. Building cross-county queries requires handling these naming differences explicitly.
All four Wisconsin counties in the atlas expose owner name on their public REST layers: Dane uses Owner/CoOwner/ConctOwner, Milwaukee uses OWNERNAME1/2/3, Waukesha uses OWNERNAMEFULL and OWNERNME1/OWNERNME2, Brown uses OWNERNME1/OWNERNME2. This is notably more open than comparable Midwest metros: Cook County IL does not expose owner name on its public REST layer; Hennepin County MN has restrictions. Wisconsin's open-records tradition and WLIP's funding of modernization work have resulted in county layers that are consistently queryable for ownership. CoOwner and OWNERNAME2/3 fields are useful when a parcel is held by a trust or LLC with multiple registered principals.
Milwaukee County's Property Information FeatureServer at services2.arcgis.com (Milwaukee_County_Parcels_Property_Information_view) holds 58+ layers in the same service. The correct layer for tax parcel ownership data is layer index 58. Layer 0 through 57 cover other feature classes (building footprints, zoning, hydrology, etc.). Requests to the service root without specifying /58 will return only metadata. Similarly, Waukesha County's Web_Tax_Parcel FeatureServer has 7 layers: layer 0 is Civil Divisions, layer 1 is SimultaneousConveyance, and layer 2 is the full parcel polygon with ownership fields. Querying the wrong layer index returns geometry with no ownership attributes — a common source of confusion when first working with these endpoints.
Madison metro and state capital county (~580,000 residents, including University of Wisconsin-Madison). Self-hosted MapServer at dcimapapps.danecounty.gov. Exposes 51 fields including Owner, CoOwner, ConctOwner, PropertyAddress, BillingStreetAddress, Municipality, TOWNSHIP, and MunicipalityFIPS. Cleanest owner query of the four Wisconsin counties in the atlas. PARCELNO is the 12-digit parcel identifier.
Largest county in Wisconsin (~935,000 residents). ArcGIS Online FeatureServer at services2.arcgis.com, layer 58. Exposes TAXKEY, OWNERNAME1/2/3, HOUSENR, STREETNAME, MUNINAME (municipality within the county), LEGALDESCR, ACRES, and Class. Up to three owner name slots. MUNINAME identifies which of Milwaukee County's 19 municipalities holds the parcel.
Milwaukee metro's western collar county (~408,000 residents, seat: Waukesha City). Self-hosted FeatureServer at gis.waukeshacounty.gov, Web_Tax_Parcel/FeatureServer/2. Exposes OWNERNAMEFULL (concatenated), OWNERNME1/2, SITEADRESS, TAXROLLYEAR, LNDVALUE, ESTFMKVALUE, and Wisconsin DOR municipality codes. Open data portal at data-waukeshacounty.opendata.arcgis.com.
Green Bay metro county (~270,000 residents). ArcGIS MapServer at gis.browncountywi.gov, ParcelPolygons/MapServer/1. Exposes PARCELID, OWNERNME1/2, SITEADRESS, PSTLADRESS, RecentOwnershipChangeDate, and PublicOwner flag. Individual name component fields (FirstName1/LastName1/FirstName2/LastName2) allow structured ownership parsing beyond the concatenated owner name.
Dane County owner search: dcimapapps.danecounty.gov/arcgissrv/rest/services/TaxParcels/MapServer/0/query?where=UPPER(Owner)+LIKE+UPPER('%25SMITH%25')&outFields=PARCELNO,Owner,CoOwner,PropertyAddress,Municipality&returnGeometry=false&f=json&resultRecordCount=10. Milwaukee by TAXKEY: services2.arcgis.com/s1wgJQKbKJihhhaT/arcgis/rest/services/Milwaukee_County_Parcels_Property_Information_view/FeatureServer/58/query?where=TAXKEY='XXXXXXXX'&outFields=*&f=json. Waukesha owner search: gis.waukeshacounty.gov/host/rest/services/Web_Tax_Parcel/FeatureServer/2/query?where=UPPER(OWNERNAMEFULL)+LIKE+UPPER('%25SMITH%25')&outFields=TAXKEY,OWNERNAMEFULL,SITEADRESS,MUNI&returnGeometry=false&f=json&resultRecordCount=10. Brown County owner search: gis.browncountywi.gov/arcgis/rest/services/ParcelPolygons/MapServer/1/query?where=UPPER(OWNERNME1)+LIKE+UPPER('%25SMITH%25')&outFields=PARCELID,OWNERNME1,SITEADRESS&returnGeometry=false&f=json&resultRecordCount=10.
Last updated 2026-05-24.
4 Wisconsin counties are indexed in the UrbanKit atlas with verified public REST endpoints: Dane, Milwaukee, Waukesha, and Brown. Each exposes an owner-name field you can search directly on the public layer.
Dane, Milwaukee, Waukesha, and Brown expose an owner-name field on the public REST layer. Dane, for example, uses the Owner field — a case-insensitive search is ?where=UPPER(Owner)%20LIKE%20UPPER('%25SMITH%25')&outFields=*&f=json. Open a county's page here for its full field list and a ready-to-run sample query.
Dane publishes parcels at https://dcimapapps.danecounty.gov/arcgissrv/rest/services/TaxParcels/MapServer/0 — a MapServer (layer 0). It indexes by Parcel Number, Owner Name, Co-Owner Name, and Contact Owner. Owner-name search: UPPER(Owner) LIKE UPPER('%25SMITH%25').
Both. Wisconsin uses a mix: Milwaukee and Waukesha publish ArcGIS FeatureServer layers, while Dane and Brown use MapServer. Both support /query, so the same owner, parcel-ID, and address lookups work against either.
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