How to Research Foreclosures Using Public Records

by Jennifer Minge

Every time a property is sold, the transaction is recorded in the deed room of the local courthouse in the county where the property is located. Unless they have been destroyed by a local disaster, all property sales are recorded, and have been since the founding of a county. It is possible to go back through the 200 year history of the United States to see the chain of ownership of any piece of property. This procedure of recording all real estate transactions allows attorneys and title companies to do a title search to determine if the seller is the legal owner of a property.

Every county courthouse has a deed room which contains books that record all real estate transactions. These books are called deed books. Each deed book is numbered in a sequential manner. The recording of a property sale is referred to by the number of the deed book and the page number of the first page recording the sale.

Most court houses contain cross records of every recorded property sale. These cross records may list property sellers by the seller and or the property address. Every property located in a county is assigned a unique assessor parcel number (APN). Most courthouses have an index that lists all APN numbers.

As an investor one of the best times to purchase an investment property is when it is in the foreclosure process and before it is sold at the courthouse steps. The investor can contact the property owner to try and arrange a purchase before the actual foreclosure date. Investors know when a property is up for foreclosure since this information is advertised in the local legal newspaper.

The challenge for investors is finding out the name of the property. This information is found in the courthouse deed room. The first place to start in searching for a property owner is the index. The index can be searched by property address or APN number. Once the property address is located in the index, it will contain the deed book and page number that records the most recent sale of that property.

In smaller counties the deed room still contains large four inch bound deed books. The investor only needs to locate the appropriate deed book and then turn to the appropriate page to find the recording of the deed. The recording will contain the name of the seller and buyer of the property. This will give the investor the name of the property that is in foreclosure.

Recently most of the larger counties have computerized their deed records. In this case it is not necessary to first search an index before finding the appropriate deed book. If a deed room is computerized, the investor only needs to enter a property address to find the current owner of that property.