Methodology & legal basis
How this review works
The law
California SB 1079 (2020), codified principally at Civil Code § 2924m, changed what happens after a 1–4 unit residential foreclosure auction. For 45 days after the trustee's sale, “eligible bidders” — prospective owner-occupants, eligible tenant buyers, qualified nonprofits, community land trusts, and public entities — can match or beat the winning auction bid and take the property instead of an investor.
A prospective owner-occupantmust be a natural person who declares they will occupy the property as their primary residence within 60 days of the trustee's deed recording, will keep it as their primary residence for at least one year, and is not acting as an agent for any other person or entity. Trustees must report qualifying sales to the Attorney General within 15 days of the sale becoming final.
The opportunity for abuse is obvious: an investor who falsely claims owner-occupant status — or routes purchases through straw buyers, family members, or shell nonprofits — takes homes that the Legislature reserved for residents and community organizations.
The data
This prototype is built from a 2026-06-01 snapshot of the Attorney General's reported residential foreclosure sales repository: 987 sales to eligible bidders across 53 counties. Buyer names were normalized (punctuation, suffixes, entity keywords), deduplicated into 798 buyer profiles, and cross-referenced for repeat purchases, shared names, and similar business stems. Some property addresses arrive redacted from the source and stay redacted here.
The full platform design adds trustee deed and affidavit OCR, DRE license lookups, Secretary of State entity records, AG charity registry and IRS exempt-organization checks, and post-sale transfer history — each one a planned enrichment phase on this same foundation.
Eligible-bidder categories
Eligible tenant buyer
50 reported sales in snapshot
Prospective owner-occupant
761 reported sales in snapshot
Nonprofit or cooperative in which an eligible tenant buyer or prospective owner-occupant is a voting member or director
21 reported sales in snapshot
Eligible nonprofit corporation
138 reported sales in snapshot
Limited partnership whose managing general partner is an eligible nonprofit corporation
15 reported sales in snapshot
LLC whose managing member is an eligible nonprofit corporation
Community land trust
1 reported sale in snapshot
Limited-equity housing cooperative
1 reported sale in snapshot
Public entity (state, county, city, district, public authority or agency)
Letter codes as reported to the Attorney General under Civil Code § 2924m(a)(3). Verify definitions against the current statute text.
Review indicators
Indicators are computed from name and address patterns in the public record. They answer one question: is this worth a human look?
The same normalized name won multiple § 2924m sales. An owner-occupant declaration promises one year of primary residence — several purchases in a short window is the strongest single reason to review the underlying affidavits.
Names matching across multiple purchases or entities sharing a naming stem (e.g. the same brand with different suffixes) may indicate related parties or serial entities.
A weaker signal — common surnames produce coincidental matches. Treated as context, not as a stand-alone reason for review.
Disclaimer
This platform identifies public-record patterns that may warrant review under California Civil Code § 2924m and related SB 1079 procedures. Listings, scores, and flags are not findings of fraud, illegality, or ineligibility. Records may contain source errors; name matches may be coincidental. Users should independently verify all records and consult qualified legal counsel before taking action. Subjects of listings may request correction of inaccurate information.