Many are public record and viewable from internet databases.
For property taxes – if you know the parcel # (apn #) you can look up any property and see if it is in property tax default, whether taxes have been paid for the current year, etc.
Put the APN (with no dashes) into the Bill # field.
For liens, it gets a little trickier. You can see if the previous owners have liens against them. Get their names from the property tax record. Hopefully the name is unusual enough. Then plug the names into the grand deed recorder database.
In order to see the contents of the liens/deeds you need to go to the county building to look it up (for free) or order it (and pay).
Also – if the property is held by a corporation, llc, partnership – you can sometimes see the agent or owner of the partnership through the CA Sec. of State’s website.
Some of this info may not be availble if the county has already recorded you as the owner, you can’t easily retrieve the previous owners name from the prop tax database.
