Yes, there is no foreclosure lis pendens in California. Lis Pendens is Latin for “litigation pending”. California does not use judicial foreclosure so, no lawsuit, no lis pendens.
They do however have a public “notice of default”(NOD) filing. How and where this occurs, I have no idea, but it’s probably a little more sophisticated than the “graffiti” method you mentioned. They may very well post on the courthouse wall, but I think they need to be published somewhere. Try the local legal newspaper. See if you can get the list on disk or download. I’m sure there are subscription services that do all the leg work for you as well. Go to your friendly local REI club and ask around. We have 8 or 10 foreclosure listing services advertising at various meetings.
I live in Fresno County (CA) and have been told by the court system that they do not have a list of pending foreclosures through the court. They tell me that individual foreclosing banks simply come to the courthouse periodically and make postings on the outside wall of the courthouse. Could this be true? Is there really no foreclosure lis pendens in Fresno County? Has anyone ever heard of this?
http://www.calpost.com will get you to a Fidelity National site that posts some of the current properties going to sale.
http://www.co.fresno.ca.us will get you the recorder’s site where you can pull NOD document numbers and owner names. You’d still have to either have title pull the documents or visit the recorder’s office and view them personally.