We use cookies for sign-in, site quality and marketing. Cookie Policy.

Skip to content

California

California distressed property data, county by county

Distress filings from California county records, with the owner and mailing address resolved so a lead is workable the day you get it. Notices of default and trustee sale are collected every business day; tax-defaulted lists follow each county’s own publication calendar.

A California foreclosure doesn’t produce a lis pendens.

Almost every California foreclosure runs non-judicially, under the power-of-sale clause in the deed of trust. No foreclosure lawsuit is filed, so no court case exists and no lis pendens is recorded. Buyers who learned the vocabulary in Florida come looking for a foreclosure filing California does not produce, and conclude the state has no data. The first public signal is a notice of default, not a lawsuit, so Lispend pulls California notices of default and trustee-sale notices every business day, plus the smaller set of California lis pendens filed in other suits.

The equivalent signals are two recorded notices, and they carry firmer dates than a Florida filing does:

  1. Notice of Default (NOD) — the opening step, recorded with the county under Cal. Civ. Code §2924. It must be mailed to the borrower and other parties entitled to notice within 10 business days of recording. At least three months must pass after it is recorded before a notice of sale can be given, and the borrower can reinstate by curing the arrears until five business days before the sale date set in the initial recorded notice of sale.
  2. Notice of Trustee Sale (NOTS) — given only after those three months have passed; it names a sale date, which can be postponed. It must be recorded, posted on the property, and mailed at least 20 days before the auction date it names.

The practical consequence is a workable window. An NOD is the earliest public signal, and the statute guarantees roughly three months before a sale can even be noticed. An NOTS names an actual auction date, so it is the sharpest deadline in distressed real estate — and the shortest.

General information about the recording process, not legal advice. Timelines have statutory minimums and can run longer.

The full California foreclosure timeline, step by step, with the statute behind each step, Riverside County pre-foreclosure, San Bernardino County pre-foreclosure.

How California’s tax-default clock works, San Diego County tax-defaulted property, San Bernardino County tax-defaulted property, San Joaquin County tax-defaulted property, Imperial County tax-defaulted property.

What is a lis pendens in California?

A lis pendens in California is real: a party to a lawsuit affecting title to real property can record a notice of pending action under Code of Civil Procedure §405.20 and following, putting the world on notice that the property’s title is contested while the case is pending. It shows up in suits like quiet title, partition and HOA disputes.

A home foreclosure is the one case it usually doesn’t reach. Most California foreclosures run non-judicially — no lawsuit is filed, so no lis pendens is recorded — and the public signals instead are the notice of default and the notice of trustee sale under Civil Code §2924. Those two notices are what Lispend’s California pre-foreclosure lane covers.

General information about California civil procedure, not legal advice.

Counties we cover

34 California counties are live today. Coverage grows as each county clears our accuracy bar, not before.

See full coverageBrowse the feed free

Florida is covered too — see the Florida counties.