How to Find Out If a Property Has Liens in California

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.

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.

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 payoff split four ways 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.

Normandie Place, Riverside

The second example goes the other direction. In August 2018 we had a deal under contract at $285,000 on Normandie Place in Riverside.

The seller owned the property free and clear, no mortgage, which people sometimes take as a sign that title is clean.

When escrow pulled the preliminary report, six liens came back. Three of them were bail bond liens, and the others were a county tax lien, an IRS lien, and a municipal code enforcement lien.

The total was too far out of proportion to the property value to resolve cleanly, and the deal fell apart before we ever got to a close.

Karns Court, Canyon Country

The third one is more typical of what we see on a regular basis. In December 2023 we closed on a townhouse on Karns Court in Canyon Country for $365,000.

There was an HOA delinquent payment lien that didn’t surface until the preliminary title report came in. The HOA management company had to calculate the release amount and issue a formal lien release before title would approve the closing, which pushed things back about a week.

That’s pretty much how HOA liens go, they’re 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.

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.