Legal Question in Real Estate Law in California

You'll have to ask the title company. If they list them as exclusions in the preliminary report (which is an offer of insurance, by the way, not an abstract of title) it generally means they consider them to be valid and will not insure against them unless they are cleared before the title insurance policy issues upon close of escrow. The basic rule, however, is that abstracts of judgment create liens effective the date they are recorded. Deeds of trust when foreclosed on by way of a trustee's sale wipe out any interest that recorded after the deed of trust. That not only includes judgments and other later liens, but also easements, leaseholds, anything that recorded after the deed of trust (with a few statutory exceptions such as tax liens). Generally, however, when a judgment debtor buys or refinances property, the lenders make them clear their judgment liens, because liens that pre-date the lender's deed of trust could wipe out the deed of trust through foreclosure. So it seems a little odd that there would be judgment liens that survived the foreclosure. The bottom line for you, though, is that you want the liens satisfied or insured against by the title company, by the time you take title. Whether the seller and the title company pay the liens, obtain releases, or decide they are invalid and insure you against them, is pretty much indifferent to you.

Depends upon their priority (in date recorded against the property you're buying). It may be a red flag that a company bought it and is promptly seeking to dump it on you, or that may simply be their business. In any event, you'll want title insurance that protects against any judgments affecting title to the property.

If the abstract of judgment was recorded after the deed of trust that was foreclosed, then those abstracts of judgment were wiped out by the foreclosure sale for that deed of trust, and the title that was given to you relates back to the title at the time the deed of trust was executed and recorded.