How to Find Liens on a Property: A California Guide
I’ve had sellers tell me their title was clean because they’d never had a major financial problem and didn’t owe anything they were aware of, and then the prelim came back with something they hadn’t thought about in years.
It’s rarely dramatic, it’s usually something the seller sort of knew about but assumed had been cleared, or something they had no idea existed. Either way, it comes up when escrow pulls the preliminary title report, and that’s not the best moment to find out about it.
Most of what’s on title in California is public record you can pull yourself before you ever open escrow.
To find liens on a property in California, search four places: the county recorder’s office for the county where the property sits, the Franchise Tax Board for state tax liens, PACER for federal court judgments, and a title company for a full preliminary report. The county recorder is where most liens surface, and it’s free to search.
Start With the County Recorder’s Office
The first place I’d start is the county recorder’s office for the county where the property is located. Anything formally recorded against that property in that county lives there, and most counties now have a searchable portal online.
You can search by the owner’s name or by the assessor’s parcel number, which is on your property tax bill. I use the APN when I can, because name searches can miss documents if there’s any variation in how the name was entered on the filing.
When a result comes back with a document type you don’t recognize, you can usually click through to read the full recorded filing. The county recorder search runs free at most offices, or close to it.
The county recorder portals I pull most often for SoCal properties are Los Angeles County, Riverside County, San Bernardino County, Orange County, and San Diego County. They’re all free to search and let you pull documents directly without an account.
The gap in a county recorder search is that it only covers what was filed in that county. A lien recorded in a different county, or one filed through federal court, won’t show up here and requires a separate search.
The cases I’ve run into where something federal doesn’t come back on a county recorder search are usually federal district court judgments, and those are in PACER rather than at the county level. There’s a small per-page fee to pull documents, and I’ll usually check it when the title situation suggests a federal court may have been involved.
I’d run this before you make any decisions about listing or pricing, not after you’re already in escrow with a buyer waiting. The sellers who’ve gotten ahead of it had options that the ones who found out mid-escrow didn’t.
If the document types in the search look unfamiliar, our page on the different types of liens goes through how each one gets created and what clearing it involves, and what a lien on a house is covers the basics if you’re starting from scratch.
State and Federal Tax Liens
FTB liens
FTB liens for unpaid California income or franchise tax get recorded with the county recorder in the county where the property is, so they’ll come up on the same search. I’ve pulled prelims where the seller had no idea there was a state tax lien sitting there, sometimes from a year they thought had been handled.
The FTB lien page covers how state tax liens are recorded and what the release process involves.
IRS liens
IRS liens for federal tax debt end up at the county recorder the same way, and I’ve seen them come up on prelims where the seller believed the federal issue had been resolved years earlier. The IRS page on federal tax liens covers the filing and release process in detail.
Judgment liens
Judgment liens are the ones I’ve seen catch sellers most off guard, partly because the connection to the property isn’t obvious. If someone won a civil lawsuit against the property owner and recorded the judgment with the county recorder, it attaches to all real property that person owns in that county.
They show up in the recorder search, but since they’re indexed under the owner’s name rather than the property address, you have to run a name search to find them. California Courts self-help section on debt lawsuits goes into how the judgment recording process works if you want to dig deeper on it.
HOA and PACE Liens Are Easy to Miss
HOA liens
HOA liens hit the county recorder’s database like anything else, but in my experience they come through under the management company’s name, which doesn’t obviously connect back to the property or the HOA. I’ve had sellers who saw the document in the search and didn’t realize it was HOA-related until they pulled the full filing.
If you see a document from an entity you don’t recognize, pull the full filing and look at it. I’ve rarely seen an HOA lien where the release amount matched the original delinquency notice, because by the time it gets to a formal lien the association has added late fees and legal costs on top.
PACE and HERO solar liens
The HERO and PACE solar liens are the ones I’ve seen blindside sellers most consistently. The financing runs through the property tax bill instead of as a personal loan, which means it stays with the property when it sells.
The buyer takes on the obligation whether they knew about it going in or not, and I’ve seen that create real friction mid-escrow when it surfaces.
To catch it before a prelim surfaces it, you’d need to look at the actual property tax bill and check for any special assessment or energy financing line item. It reads like an add-on to the taxes rather than a lien, and I’ve had deals where nobody caught it until we were already in escrow.
What a Title Company Catches That You Won’t
I’ve had sellers who ran the county recorder search themselves and felt good about what they found, and the prelim still came back with items sitting in federal filings and court records that the county portal never pulls. I’ve sat through title reviews where the seller had already searched the county recorder themselves and the prelim still had things that weren’t in that database at all.
I’m Andrea Van Soest, a licensed real estate agent (California DRE #01505854) and co-founder of SoCal Home Buyers.
I’ve pulled prelims where the thing on title was an unreleased deed of trust from a lender that got paid off 15 years earlier and just never recorded the reconveyance. The seller had no memory of it and didn’t know that document needed to exist.
Beyond the liens, I’ve had prelims come back with title defects that had nothing to do with any debt. The one that comes up more than you’d expect is a chain of ownership gap from an estate that was never fully probated.
I’d get the prelim ordered before you’ve committed to a timeline or made any promises to a buyer about when things are going to close. I’ve had sellers find out about a title issue mid-escrow with a buyer already waiting, and more than once that buyer threatened to walk rather than wait on the resolution.
What We’ve Found on Real Deals
The deals below are from escrows we’ve closed, and as a cash buyer describing my own transactions, I want you to know where I’m coming from.
Acacia Avenue, Desert Hot Springs
In August 2017 we closed on a house on Acacia Avenue in Desert Hot Springs for $165,000. There was a HERO/PACE solar lien attached to the property tax bill that nobody had flagged before we opened escrow, and the seller had signed a contract for $29,235 worth of solar panels years earlier and had sort of half-forgotten about it.
Our buyer went through the paperwork and figured the actual installed value of the system was around $8,640, against the $29,235 the seller had signed for years earlier. It took a threatened lis pendens and a $5,000 negotiated payoff split between the seller, the buyer, and our team to get the deal closed.
That kind of lien doesn’t show up anywhere obvious and it doesn’t come with a reminder, it just sits on the tax bill until someone finally looks at it.
Sycamore Drive, Descanso
In 2017 we closed on a house on Sycamore Drive in Descanso, in San Diego County, for $135,000. It was days away from a tax sale, with roughly $40,000 in back property taxes plus county and water district liens stacked against it.
The trustee handling the property needed to close fast to save whatever equity was left before the sale date, and none of those liens showed up anywhere except the recorded title record.
We cleared all of it through escrow at closing, and the sale happened in time. That’s the kind of situation where pulling the record early is the difference between salvaging a property and losing it at auction.
Garbino Road, Cathedral City
In 2020 we closed on a property on Garbino Road in Cathedral City for $200,000. The prelim came back with an $80,000 private lien the owners’ mother held from a family loan that had gone toward buying the house.
A private lien like that never shows up unless someone pulls the record, and the lienholder in this case was an elderly relative living in a care home in another city, which made tracking down the payoff demand its own small project.
It cleared through escrow at closing once we had the demand and release in hand. Private liens are usually resolvable, they just add time and a cost that has to come from somewhere in the transaction.
If You Find Something
Finding a lien on the county recorder search doesn’t automatically mean you’re stuck or that a sale is off the table. Most liens get paid off through escrow when the property sells, because the sale proceeds cover the payoff amount and the title company handles the coordination.
The situations that get more complicated are when the total of what’s owed against the property is close to or exceeds what it’s worth, or when the lien holder is just hard to find. A company that no longer exists, an heir from a private family arrangement, a creditor that’s been bought out multiple times, those can take real legwork to track down.
If you find something on the county recorder search and you’re not sure what it means, take it to a title professional or an attorney before you make any decisions. They can usually tell you pretty quickly whether it’s something that can be resolved through escrow or whether you have a bigger problem on your hands.
That’s true whether you’re planning to sell to a cash buyer or list on the open market.
What the lien resolution process looks like is covered there in more detail. If your question is more about whether you can sell at all given what you’ve found, this piece on selling with a lien in California covers the options in more detail.
And if you’re dealing with a situation where the lien is connected to a divorce, a foreclosure, or probate, understanding who can put a lien on a property and what rights they have can help clarify what you’re dealing with before you start trying to resolve it.
Finding Liens on a Property: Common Questions
How do I find out if there’s a lien on my property in California?
Start with the county recorder’s office for the county where the property sits. You can search by the owner’s name or the assessor’s parcel number, and most counties have a free online portal. For anything filed in federal court, check PACER, and for a complete picture a title company can pull a preliminary report that reaches beyond what the county portal shows.
Are property liens public record?
Yes. Most of what’s on title in California is public record you can pull yourself before you ever open escrow. Recorded liens live at the county recorder’s office and are searchable by the owner’s name or the parcel number. The gap is that a county search only covers what was filed in that county, so a federal or out-of-county filing needs a separate search.
Can you search for property liens for free?
Mostly, yes. The county recorder portals for Los Angeles, Riverside, San Bernardino, Orange, and San Diego counties are all free to search and let you pull documents directly. PACER charges a small per-page fee for federal records, and a title company or third-party service will charge for a full report, but the county recorder search that catches most liens costs little to nothing.
If You’re Thinking About Selling
Doug and I have been buying houses across Southern California since 2008, and we’ve closed over 400 transactions, and liens and title issues have come up in more of those deals than most people would expect. Most of them are workable if the numbers support it, and the ones that aren’t, we’ll tell you that upfront.
If you want to talk through your situation and figure out what your options are, you can reach us at (951) 331-3844 or fill out the form at SoCalHomeBuyers.com. If a traditional listing makes more sense for what you’ve got, we’ll tell you that too.
