does the note i carry stay private or does it show up somewhere public

recorded mortgage in ohio is a public document filed with the county recorder - stark county in your case. what shows up depends entirely on how your attorney drafts it. the mortgage instrument itself gets recorded and yes it is fully visible to anyone who pulls it, but the key is that the rate, the balloon date, and the full terms usually live in the promissory note, not the mortgage. the note is almost never recorded. so if your attorney keeps the rate and payment schedule in the note only and the mortgage just references "that certain promissory note dated x," then someone pulling the public record sees the lienholder, the property, the loan amount, and the recording date. that's it. the 8% and the 5 year balloon stay private between you and the buyer. i went through something similar on a land contract in 2022 and made sure the recorded memorandum had zero financial terms in it.

the note broker calls are going to happen regardless because data scrapers pull new mortgage recordings weekly from every county recorder in ohio that has online access, and stark county does. they're not calling because they know your rate, they're calling because a new lien appeared with an individual as mortgagee instead of a bank. that's the flag. you can't stop that part. what i actually want to know though - did your attorney say whether you're doing a straight mortgage and note or a land contract, because the recording mechanics and what's visible are different enough that the answer above might shift on you.

ran a seller-financed deal on a duplex in youngstown back in 2021, same situation, same paranoia. what gets recorded is the mortgage instrument itself, not just a placeholder lien. in ohio that means the full document goes into the county recorder's database, stamped and indexed, and yes the rate, the balance, the balloon date, all of it is visible to anyone with a recorder.gov login or who walks into the stark county recorder's office. the promissory note itself is a separate document and does NOT get recorded, that's the piece with the payment schedule and the fine print, but the mortgage or deed of trust that secures it will reference enough of the key terms that a note broker can reconstruct your deal in about four minutes. i had three calls within ten days of my youngstown closing from people i'd never heard of who knew my exact maturity date.

what i'd push your attorney on is whether the recorded mortgage can be drafted to reference the note by its date and parties only, rather than restating the rate and balloon explicitly in the mortgage body. some ohio attorneys do this, some don't bother unless you ask. the note itself stays private as long as you don't hand it over, but the mortgage language is where your exposure is. is your attorney using a standard form mortgage or drafting it specifically for this transaction, because that one difference is going to determine how much of your negotiating position is sitting in a public database by february.