Sorry to sound sarcastic, but the easiest way is to pay a title company to do all the leg work for you. The cheapest way, but not easiest is to go to the county's recorder office and do your own research. It takes a lot of time and experience to know exactly what you're looking for. To do most of preliminary searches, I use a free county searches that only show you the index, have to pay to see all the documents. Start out doing your own searches pay a title company to see if their finding comes up the same as yours to make sure you're not missing anything. Once you know what you looking for, you can bypass the title company. Good luck, but be very careful.
All good info above on checking county records, BKY, and the O&E report. I found https://www.cscglobal.com and they charge $75 for the O&E; if you want to dig deeper, a title report on the current owner, or digging deeper, all the way back in time is typically $150-350+++. Good luck!
I'm exploring to purchase auction property. And my experience going to county office in LA, they also require the current owner name. How can I find that information?
Good info above.. for abstrax.. do you know how much to do title search and O&E ?