{"id":9693,"date":"2010-02-17T11:36:22","date_gmt":"2010-02-17T19:36:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/seattlebubble.com\/blog\/?p=9693"},"modified":"2010-02-17T11:36:22","modified_gmt":"2010-02-17T19:36:22","slug":"how-to-navigate-and-understand-public-records","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/seattlebubble.com\/blog\/2010\/02\/17\/how-to-navigate-and-understand-public-records\/","title":{"rendered":"How-To: Navigate and Understand Public Records"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday a reader emailed me asking how to look up public foreclosure documents. Since it’s been over a year since I covered the topic of researching public records<\/a>, I thought this would be a good time to review the process. In this post we’ll be discussing the process and providing links for King County. For other counties hit the Real Estate Resources<\/a> page.<\/p>\n

For the purposes of this post, let’s say you’ve found a home on Redfin, and as you’re looking at the listing photos, the obviously-vacant state of the home tips you off that this home just might be a bank-owned foreclosure. As an example, we’ll use 11715 7th Ave NE<\/a>, listed last week at an asking price of $332,000.<\/p>\n

First, let’s head over to the King County Parcel Search<\/a>, click “Search by Address,” and put in the address in the required format (i.e. – 11715 in the “House Number” box and 7th in the “Street Name” box). That will pull up a map on the right side with the parcel outlined in purple, as well as a list of details and a series of links on the lower-left.<\/p>\n

If you’re interested in how much the property last sold for (in a non-foreclosure), click the “Get Property Report” link to pull up the assessor parcel information page<\/a>. Look through the list of “Sales\/Quit Claims\/Transfers” for sales with an instrument type of “Statutory Warranty Deed,” which usually indicates a standard sale. In this case, we see that the property sold for $210k in July 2001, and then sold for $400k in March 2006.<\/p>\n

Grab the “Parcel Number” from the lower-left. In this case, our parcel number is 6413100232. Now, head over to King County Records<\/a> and click the big “Records Search” box. Accept the disclaimer, then click the big “Search” link next to the text “Official Public Records.”<\/p>\n

In order to find all the relevant documents, we’ll put in some recent date range (like 01\/01\/2008 to 02\/15\/2010) and down in the “Tax Parcel” box put the parcel number in the from and to boxes. Leave document type and everything else blank.<\/p>\n

Here are a few of the possible document types that will be returned:<\/p>\n