What Records Should a Real Estate Lawyer in Northern California Review?

A purchase agreement can identify the property, price, contingencies, disclosure obligations, closing requirements, and contractual deadlines. Amendments, escrow instructions, inspection materials, and correspondence may show whether those terms changed before closing.

A transaction problem should be traced through the operative agreement and closing file rather than inferred from the deed alone. Broader transaction issues may overlap with real estate transactions.

A title issue concerns a claimed interest in the property and the instruments through which that interest arose. A lien or deed of trust may show an encumbrance. Boundary and easement disputes can require legal descriptions, maps, surveys, and evidence of actual use.

Possession raises a separate issue involving who occupies or controls the property and what claimed right supports that possession.

Start with the current deed and identify recorded documents that may affect the claimed interest.

Relevant records may include:

• Grant deeds and quitclaim deeds
• Deeds of trust and reconveyances
• Recorded liens
• Easements
• Assignments
• Notices affecting title
• Recorded maps and legal descriptions

A county recorder's index can help locate documents, but an index entry does not replace the underlying instrument when its terms matter.

Questions about the recording history of a deed or other instrument may also involve land title recording.

A legal description does not necessarily show where a fence, driveway, retaining wall, or improvement sits in practice.

A boundary or encroachment issue may require a survey, parcel map, photographs, permits, and older records showing how the affected area has been used. Those materials can then be compared with the deed and other recorded instruments.

Recorded ownership and physical possession describe separate aspects of the property. One should not be assumed to establish the other.

The purchase agreement identifies what the parties agreed to transfer. Deeds and title materials can then be checked against that transaction.

Differences in owner names, legal descriptions, easements, liens, or other recorded interests may require further examination before closing. If a title report identifies a recorded item, the underlying instrument may need to be read to understand the right or restriction involved.

A transaction requiring a separate change in title may also involve deed transfer.

A deed of trust or recorded lien may affect the closing process. An easement may burden part of the property without changing the identity of the fee owner.

Disclosure and notice requirements depend on the property and transaction involved, so they should not be treated as identical for every California sale.

Permits and planning records can also matter when the transaction depends on an addition, conversion, commercial use, or other improvement.

Depending on the issue, relevant materials may include the purchase agreement, amendments, escrow records, deeds, title documents, surveys, permits, photographs, payment records, notices, and communications.

Dated photographs or earlier surveys may help establish the history of a physical condition. Amendments and correspondence may be more important in a dispute over what the parties agreed to do.

The evidence set should follow the dispute rather than expand into every document ever associated with the property.

A title claim, contract dispute, boundary issue, and dispute over possession may involve different remedies, deadlines, and forums.

California Code of Civil Procedure § 392 generally places specified actions directly involving real property in the county where the property, or part of it, is located. These include actions to recover real property or determine an interest in it, claims for injury to real property, and foreclosure of liens or mortgages.

Other claims, including contract-based disputes involving property, may follow different venue rules. The filing location should therefore be determined from the specific claim rather than from the general label "real estate dispute."

A dispute focused on possession may overlap with recovery of real property.

Documents authorized for recording are handled through county recorder offices. For a particular parcel, the relevant recorder is the office serving the county where the property is located.

Research methods differ by county. Placer County, for example, provides an online real-property index but keeps scanned document images available for public research in the Recorder's Office rather than online.

Sacramento County likewise provides an online recorded-document index, while copies of the underlying instruments must be obtained separately.

Official county records should therefore be distinguished from information displayed by private property-search services.

Recorded title documents and building or land-use records serve different purposes and may be maintained by different government offices.

A county recorder may maintain deeds and other recordable instruments, while a city or county planning or building department may hold permits, zoning records, or information about improvements. The correct office can depend on whether the property lies within an incorporated city or an unincorporated area.

These local differences affect where records are found and how procedures are handled, not the underlying statewide property law.