Sunnystar
Courtier
- Joined
- Sep 21, 2008
- Messages
- 997
- City
- Oregon
- Country
- United States
They have a huge mortgage. Apparently that is something the media can look up.
Yes, that is something that is absolutely able to be looked up by the media. I am a mortgage closer by profession and any land title deeds must be recorded with the county recorder, and you can look them up by property address, APN (Assessor's Parcel Number), or even the name of the homeowner. At minimum, there would be a Bargain & Sale Deed or a Warranty Deed (they're both essentially the same thing) transferring the ownership of the property from the seller to the buyer. That deed will include the legal property description and APN. From there, it's a matter of doing a Chain of Title search to see what other deeds are on record for the property, and the Chain of Title search would pull up the Mortgage Deed (if they did take out a mortgage to purchase the property) which would show who their lender is as well as how large the mortgage was that they took in order to purchase the property.
Most county recorders and tax assessors have websites with the county tax information readily available - probably at least once a week I find myself Googling some random county tax assessor's website to look up property tax information to verify we are collecting the correct amounts for escrows or that the homeowner is current on their property taxes. Property taxes are based on current property value and in California property taxes only increase when the property has had an ownership transfer, so H&M are going to have a pretty hefty property tax bill in addition to their mortgage.
All of this information is a matter of public record and I'm not sure how they can keep any of it private. There WILL be a record of the title transfer and even if they themselves didn't take ownership but instead put the ownership of the property in a trust or an LLC, there will be a mortgage deed on record too if they had one for the purchase of the property. I assume that the statements "they had to take a mortgage to buy the Montecito property" have been properly researched by interested reporters but I also am pretty sure that if I was inclined (totally 1000% not, lol), I could find the necessary information (subject property address) and confirm it myself.