California Property Records: How to Search Deeds, Liens, and Title Statewide

Yes. California property records are public documents. Deeds, deeds of trust, liens, and parcel maps are recorded with and maintained by the County Recorder in the county where the property is located, and anyone may search the index or obtain a copy, in person at the County Recorder’s office, online where the county offers it, or through a professional report. Ownership and assessed-value information is also public and is held by the County Assessor, and court judgments that can affect title are public records of the Superior Court. The main practical limits are not access but coverage: each of the 58 counties keeps its own records with its own online system, and the reach of older documents varies. U.S. Title Records compiles the public record across the County Recorder, the Assessor, and the courts into one report from $29.

The fastest way to find the current owner of a California property is the County Assessor for the county where the property sits, which lists the owner of record by address along with the parcel and assessed value. To confirm legal ownership and how title is held, the County Recorder’s most recent recorded deed is the controlling record, and it will show whether the property is held by an individual, a married couple, a trust, or an entity such as an LLC. The Assessor owner and the recorded deed can occasionally differ, for example after a recent sale that has not yet updated the roll, so a reliable answer reads both. A Property Detail Report ($29) combines the Assessor owner with the recorded vesting deed, and a Title Search by Name ($75) finds every property tied to a given person or entity across California. Property owner search.

A California title search reads the chain of recorded deeds in the County Recorder index to confirm current ownership and how title is held, identifies every open deed of trust and lien, confirms that paid loans have been reconveyed, searches the Superior Court for abstracts of judgment and any foreclosure, checks for Mello-Roos special assessments and recorded CC&Rs, and reviews the Assessor for tax defaults. Because California records are county-level with no statewide index, and because many properties carry special assessments and recorded restrictions, a reliable title search reconciles the County Recorder, the Assessor, and the Superior Court rather than reading the deed index alone. You can do much of this yourself in a county with good online access, but the special-assessment and reconveyance checks and the cross-source reconciliation are where a professional search earns its keep. U.S. Title Records performs the full examination from $29, with the Expanded Title Search ($375) as the most comprehensive option.

Yes, and this is one of the most important things to understand about California property. Proposition 13 limits a property’s assessed value to its base-year value plus no more than 2 percent a year, which keeps a long-time owner’s taxes low, but a change of ownership triggers a reassessment to current market value. When you buy, the County Assessor resets the assessed value to your purchase price, and because that reset usually happens after closing, the county issues a supplemental tax bill for the difference between the old assessed value and the new one, prorated for the rest of the year. The seller’s low tax base does not transfer to you. Proposition 19, effective in 2021, further limited the parent-child and grandparent-grandchild exclusions, so an inherited property that the heir does not use as a primary residence, or a rental or vacation home, is now reassessed at market value. For anyone reading a property’s tax record, the recorded assessed value reflects the current owner, not what a buyer will pay. U.S. Title Records reports the parcel and assessed value in the Property Detail Report ($29).

The overwhelming majority of California foreclosures are non-judicial. Because a California home loan is secured by a deed of trust that places legal title with a trustee and grants a power of sale, a lender can foreclose without filing a lawsuit by following the statutory process in Civil Code 2924: it records a notice of default, waits the required period, records and publishes a notice of sale, and then conducts a public auction at which the property is sold to the highest bidder and a trustee’s deed is delivered to the buyer. The full timeline is typically around four months at a minimum. Once a non-judicial trustee’s sale occurs, there is generally no right of redemption and the lender cannot pursue a deficiency judgment. California also permits judicial foreclosure through a court action, which is far less common but preserves a right of redemption and, in some cases, a deficiency. Because most foreclosures are non-judicial, the documents that matter, the deed of trust, the notice of default, and the notice of sale, are recorded rather than filed in a lawsuit, and the foreclosing lien’s priority controls which junior liens survive. U.S. Title Records identifies open deeds of trust, reconveyances, and recorded foreclosure notices in the Full Owner Lien Report ($195).

A deed and a title are related but not the same. A deed is a physical, recorded document that transfers ownership of real property from a grantor to a grantee, and California’s standard instrument is the grant deed, with the quitclaim deed used to convey without warranty. Title, by contrast, is the legal concept of ownership itself, the bundle of rights to possess, use, and dispose of the property; it is not a single document but a status established by the chain of recorded deeds. You take title to a property by receiving and recording a deed, and a title search examines the full chain of deeds and other recorded instruments to confirm that the seller actually holds clear title and that no undisclosed lien or defect rides with it. In short, the deed is the instrument; the title is the ownership it conveys. U.S. Title Records retrieves the deed in the Deed Copy ($45) and examines the title in a title search.

A standard California title search typically examines the chain of title back about 30 to 40 years, which is generally enough to establish a marketable chain and surface the liens and defects that matter for a current transaction. A full chain of title can go back much further, to the original patent or land grant, and is assembled when a transaction or a legal matter requires it, such as a quiet-title action, an estate, a boundary or easement dispute, or a property with a complicated history. How far the records reach in practice depends on the county; California County Recorder records can extend back well into the nineteenth century, though older documents are more likely to require retrieval from physical archives or microfilm. U.S. Title Records traces the full conveyance history in the Chain of Title ($275).

Pricing is the same in every California county: Property Detail Report $29, Deed Copy $45, Title Search by Name $75, Lien Report $95, Full Owner Lien Report $195, Chain of Title $275, and Expanded Title Search $375. The $29 report is the quick ownership, parcel, and value check, the $195 report is the recommended due-diligence search that includes judgments, special assessments, and tax status, and the $375 Expanded is the full title examination with chain and reconveyance verification. There is no account, subscription, or recurring charge, one flat fee per property, delivered as a PDF by email. See the full schedule of fees. BBB A+ since 2009.