You can build your own Maricopa County pre-foreclosure list from free public records. The method below uses two official sources, the Maricopa County Recorder and the Maricopa County Assessor, plus a phone call to the trustee near the sale date. It works. It is also slow, and the slow parts are the ones that decide whether a list is any good. This guide walks through each step and is honest about where the time goes.
What “pre-foreclosure” means here
Most Arizona home loans are secured by deeds of trust and foreclosed by trustee sale, without a court case. For an investor, the most useful public signal is the recorded notice of trustee sale. Once it is recorded, the sale cannot take place before the 91st day after recording (A.R.S. § 33-807(D)), and the borrower or a junior lienholder can still reinstate the loan until 5:00 p.m. on the last day before the sale that is not a Saturday or legal holiday (A.R.S. § 33-813(A)). That window, roughly three months, is the pre-foreclosure period this guide is about. If you are new to the process, start with how Arizona trustee sales work.
What you need
- The Maricopa County Recorder’s recorded document search.
- The Maricopa County Assessor parcel search.
- A spreadsheet with columns for recording number, recording date, APN, sale date, trustee, trustee phone, foreclosed deed of trust, status and notes.
- Time every week, because the list starts going stale the day you build it.
Step 1: pull new notices from the recorder
The recorder indexes every document by a document code. Its public search system returns notices of trustee sale under code NS. Search code NS for a recording date range, such as the past seven days. The result list gives you recording numbers and dates; the substance is in the document image.
To give a sense of volume: for recordings dated September 1–30, 2026, the recorder’s public search returned 501 documents under code NS and 324 under code CQ, the code for cancellations of notice of sale (queried October 1, 2026). That is several hundred notices a month to open and read, and hundreds of cancellations to match back against them.
Step 2: read each notice
Open each notice and copy the fields that A.R.S. § 33-808(C) requires: the sale date, time and place; the street address and legal description; the assessor’s parcel number; the original principal balance; the beneficiary and trustee and their addresses; and the trustee’s phone number. Also note the recording reference for the deed of trust being foreclosed. Our notice of trustee sale guide explains each field.
Check the sale date against the recording date. A sale set earlier than the 91st day after recording would not comply with A.R.S. § 33-808(C)(1), and an error in the date, time or place of sale requires the trustee to record a cancellation (A.R.S. § 33-808(E)).
Step 3: match each notice to the assessor’s parcel
Look up the APN with the assessor. You want the property use (single-family, condo, vacant land and so on), living area, lot size, year built and the county’s full cash value. Full cash value is an assessment figure, not an appraisal, and it says nothing about the property’s current condition. Use it as a reference point and do your own comparable sales.
Here is what our own records show about how auction prices compare with that figure.
Step 4: check the loan position
Pull the deed of trust named in the notice and look for older deeds of trust on the same parcel that have not been released. This matters because a buyer at a trustee sale takes the property subject to all liens senior to the foreclosed deed of trust, and clear of those junior to it (A.R.S. § 33-811(E)). If the notice is on a second loan, the first loan stays on the property.
You cannot fully clear title from the index. Treat this step as a screen to drop obviously bad candidates, and get professional title work on anything you plan to bid on.
Step 5: remove cancelled and sold properties
Notices drop out in two ways that leave a record. A cancellation of notice of sale (code CQ) is recorded after reinstatement, payoff, or when a sale is not held or not properly postponed (A.R.S. § 33-813(E)–(F)). A trustee’s deed (code TD) is recorded after a completed sale, within seven business days after the trustee receives payment (A.R.S. § 33-811(B)). Search both codes each week and match them to your list by parcel or legal description. The index rows alone do not tell you which notice a cancellation belongs to; you have to open them.
Step 6: confirm status and the bid near the sale date
A postponement is announced by public declaration at the sale, and the statute requires no other notice of it (A.R.S. § 33-810(B)), so the recorder’s index cannot tell you whether a sale is still on. The trustee can. After a postponement, the trustee must on request give the next scheduled date and time. Starting at 9:00 a.m. on the last business day before the sale, the trustee must also make available the actual bid or a good-faith estimate of the beneficiary’s credit bid (A.R.S. § 33-809(F)). Call the number on the notice. See postponed and cancelled sales for how to handle the moving dates.
Step 7: repeat every week
New notices arrive every business day, cancellations remove others, and sale dates move. A list you do not update weekly is mostly wrong within a month or two.
Why the DIY method is slow
- The facts are in images, not the index. The sale date, APN and trustee live inside each notice, so every notice has to be opened and read.
- Matching is manual. Notices, cancellations, trustee’s deeds and assessor parcels are separate records that you join yourself.
- Postponements need no recorded document. The current sale date comes from the trustee, one property at a time.
- The bid figure appears late. The credit-bid estimate is only required from the business day before the sale.
- Valuation needs its own research. Full cash value is a starting point, and comparable sales take time to pull.
Where Foreclosure Brief saves the time
Foreclosure Brief does steps 1 through 5 for you, from the same official sources. We read recorded notices, match each one to its assessor parcel, record cancellations and trustee’s deeds as they appear, and add the property facts, recent recorded comparable sales, estimated repair and holding costs, and a modeled auction target. Each listing shows where its facts came from and whether the current sale status has been confirmed with an official source or only stated on the recorded notice. You still make the call on the trustee and your own title work before bidding. We never publish owner or borrower names.
See the current list on the Maricopa County trustee sale page, or look at a full example in the free sample below.
Frequently asked questions
What counts as a pre-foreclosure in Arizona?
For investors, the most useful public signal in an Arizona deed of trust foreclosure is the recorded notice of trustee sale. From recording, at least 91 days must pass before the sale (A.R.S. § 33-807(D)), and the borrower can reinstate until 5:00 p.m. on the last business day before the sale (§ 33-813(A)).
Is pre-foreclosure data in Maricopa County free?
The recorder’s document index and the assessor’s parcel data are publicly searchable. The time cost is the problem: each notice has to be opened, read and matched to a parcel by hand.
Can I trust the assessor’s value for a foreclosure property?
Use it as a reference point, not an appraisal. The assessor’s full cash value is a tax figure and says nothing about the property’s current condition. Our trustee sale results report shows how winning bids have compared with it in Maricopa County.