California Unclaimed Property Search

Search California's official unclaimed-property database — bank accounts, uncashed checks, insurance benefits, wages, stocks, bonds, and safe-deposit-box contents held by the State Controller — by owner name, city, ZIP, property type, and minimum value. Get clean, normalized JSON records ready for skip-trace, asset-recovery, and "found money" workflows.

Why this data source is different

Most unclaimed-property actors scrape a search portal one query at a time. This actor reads the State Controller's own bulk property-records files (sco.ca.gov → Download Unclaimed Property Records):

• Official and sanctioned. The SCO publishes the entire public database as CSV and explicitly invites the public to download it and "conduct outreach to people and businesses who may not know they have unclaimed property." No CAPTCHA, no rate-limit games, no terms-of-service gray zone.
• Refreshed every Thursday by the state. Every run reads the current week's files, so results are never staler than 7 days.
• Complete. A portal search shows a page of hits; the bulk files contain every record, including current cash balance and pending/paid claim counters that tell you whether a property is still claimable.
• Fast where it counts. The state splits the database into value tiers. If you set minValue: 500, the actor scans only the ~155 MB high-value file instead of 3+ GB — typical high-value name searches finish in a few minutes. Tiers are scanned highest-value-first, so maxRecords keeps your most valuable matches.

Who uses this

• Skip tracers & people-search platforms — an unclaimed-property hit is both a contact-data signal (last known address) and a conversation opener.
• Asset-recovery / heir-finder firms — California authorizes professional investigators to work these records and caps finder fees at 10%, which keeps the market professionalized. Filter by minValue to build a book of claims worth working.
• Fintech "found money" features — match your user base against the state database (name + ZIP) and surface claimable cash in-app.
• Estate attorneys & genealogists — locate property held under a decedent's name, including safe-deposit-box contents and securities.

Input

Field	Description
ownerName	Person or business name. Case-insensitive, punctuation-proof, word-order independent: "john o'brien" matches OBRIEN JOHN M. Every word must appear in the record's owner name. Required unless browseMode is on.
city	Owner's last-known city (handles the source's 15-character truncation — "Pacific Palisades" matches the stored PACIFIC PALISAD).
zip	Owner's last-known 5-digit ZIP (matches ZIP and ZIP+4 records).
propertyType	Keyword ("insurance", "securities", "safe-deposit", …) or exact NAUPA code ("68").
minValue	Minimum current cash balance in USD. Also selects the smallest set of state value-tier files to scan. Non-cash records (shares on deposit, safe-deposit-box contents) are kept — their value lives outside the cash column, and the tier file bounds it.
maxRecords	Stop after this many matches (default 100).
browseMode	Search without a name — e.g. every $10,000+ property in ZIP 90210. Requires at least one narrowing filter.

Example output record

{
  "propertyId": "9173148",
  "ownerName": "SMITH JOHN",
  "ownersOnRecord": 1,
  "ownerAddress": {
    "street": "13701 ANNANDALE DR 13-E",
    "city": "SEAL BEACH",
    "state": "CA",
    "zip": "90740",
    "countryCode": "USA"
  },
  "propertyType": "Savings accts/crdt union shrs",
  "propertyTypeCode": "82",
  "cashReported": 516.07,
  "currentCashBalance": 516.07,
  "sharesReported": 0,
  "securitiesName": null,
  "cusip": null,
  "pendingClaims": 0,
  "paidClaims": 0,
  "holder": {
    "name": "FIRST INTERSTATE BANK",
    "street": "1200 W 7TH ST G9-32",
    "city": "LOS ANGELES",
    "state": "CA",
    "zip": "90017"
  },
  "source": "California State Controller — claimit.ca.gov bulk property records",
  "sourceFile": "04_From_500_To_Beyond"
}

Every record includes the state's property ID — the key a claimant (or your client) uses to file at claimit.ca.gov. pendingClaims / paidClaims let you skip properties already being claimed.

What data you get

Each matched record includes: property ID, owner name(s), reported owner address (street/city/state/ZIP as held by the state), property type (NAUPA code + description), cash amount, securities/shares where applicable, holder (the company that reported it), and report year. Output is one normalized JSON record per match — see the example below.

Pricing

Pay-per-event — you pay for matches, not rows scanned:

Event	Price
Actor start	$0.02 per run
Matched property record	$0.005 per record ($5.00 / 1,000)

Why this price: general skip-trace lookups on Apify run at $7 per 1,000 results, and those results are inferred contact data. These are official state records with a dollar value attached, normalized and claim-ready, at $5 per 1,000. Cheaper unclaimed-property scrapers exist ($3 per 1,000), but they replay portal searches: per-query result caps, no value-tier targeting, no bulk-file completeness guarantee, and output that mirrors whatever the portal happens to render. This actor reads the same files the state publishes for exactly this purpose, verifies the schema on every run, and fails loudly instead of silently drifting.

A full-database browse (e.g. every property over $10,000 statewide) is a single run: scan cost is the flat $0.02 start fee plus your matched records.

Notes & good citizenship

• Owner addresses are last known addresses reported by holders, often years old. For people-search use, treat them as historical signals, not current residences.
• California caps unclaimed-property finder fees at 10% (CCP §1582). If you work claims commercially, know your state's investigator registration rules.
• The actor sets a descriptive User-Agent, downloads each file once per run with exponential-backoff retries, and never hammers the state's servers with parallel requests.
• Source files are refreshed by the SCO every Thursday; property IDs are stable across refreshes.