Merced County CA Lien Filings: UCC, Tax, Mechanics & Judgments

Search the Merced County, California Assessor-Clerk-Recorder public index and get clean, structured lien records for secured-lending, credit, collections and due-diligence workflows. One row per recorded UCC filing, tax lien, mechanics lien, judgment, lis pendens or other statutory lien, with the debtor and the secured party or claimant already separated.

Merced County is a Central Valley agricultural and commercial recording jurisdiction. Its county index carries the recorded lien families that the California Secretary of State UCC system does not: federal and California tax liens, mechanics liens, judgment recordings, lis pendens, assessment liens and other statutory liens.

What you get

• Document identity: document number, all published document types, recorder type code, recording date and page count.
• Debtor side: every debtor, defendant, owner or grantor name, with counts and the raw grantor list.
• Secured-party side: every secured party, plaintiff, judgment creditor, tax agency or lien claimant, with counts and the raw grantee list.
• Lien classification: normalized ucc, tax_lien, mechanics_lien, judgment_lien, lis_pendens and other_lien categories, plus a normalized filing type such as ucc_initial, ucc_amendment, tax_lien or lis_pendens.
• Release handling: explicit lien releases, removals, cancellations and UCC terminations are flagged. Set includeReleases to false to keep only new liens and active filings.
• Clean JSON: flat snake_case keys, no nested objects, no HTML, stable record IDs and semicolon-separated party lists.
• Exact document lookup: pull one known document number without a date range.

The county's public detail page publishes the document number, page count, recording date, document types and the grantor/grantee parties. It does not publish lien amounts, property descriptions or a prior-instrument number, so this actor does not invent them.

Who it is for

• MCA and ISO brokers who want new UCC-1 filings and UCC-3 activity in California's Central Valley.
• Equipment finance, factoring and commercial lenders monitoring competitor secured-party activity.
• Credit, collections and recovery teams tracking tax liens, judgments and mechanics liens against a business or property.
• Construction suppliers and contractors finding mechanics-lien filings and the owner/claimant pair.
• KYB, legal and due-diligence teams checking whether a counterparty already has recorded secured debt.
• Tax-lien and real-estate researchers working Merced County recordings.

How to use it

Add one or more of the following:

Input	What it does
debtorNames	Search the debtor, defendant or owner side. Partial names work from the start of the name, for example SMITH or PATEL.
securedPartyNames	Search the lender, claimant, plaintiff or creditor side, for example GOODLEAP, UNITED STATES or a contractor name. The county matches from the start of the name.
documentNumbers	Look up exact recorder document numbers, for example 2025000004.
lienTypes	Keep only the categories you need: ucc, tax_lien, mechanics_lien, judgment_lien, lis_pendens, other_lien.
includeReleases	Set to false for new liens and active filings only.
dateFrom / dateTo	Recorded-date window in YYYY-MM-DD. Empty dates mean the last 30 days on a browse run and the last five years on a name or document search.
maxFilings	Maximum unique records to return and charge. Free Apify users receive up to 10 results per run.

Leave all search fields empty to browse the newest recordings in the selected categories.

Example input

{
  "debtorNames": ["SMITH"],
  "lienTypes": ["ucc", "tax_lien", "mechanics_lien", "judgment_lien", "lis_pendens"],
  "dateFrom": "2026-01-01",
  "maxFilings": 25
}

Example output

{
  "record_id": "2025000004",
  "document_number": "2025000004",
  "doc_type": "TAX LIEN (FED/STATE/CNTY/CTY)",
  "doc_type_code": "TLN",
  "filing_type": "tax_lien",
  "lien_category": "tax_lien",
  "is_release": false,
  "recorded_date": "2025-01-02",
  "debtor_name": "ORTIZ ORCHARD BRUSH SHREDDING",
  "secured_party_name": "STATE OF CALIFORNIA EMPLOYMENT DEVELOPMENT DEPARTMENT",
  "party_direction": "grantor_debtor",
  "county": "Merced",
  "state": "CA"
}

Coverage and freshness

• Jurisdiction: Merced County, California.
• Record families: UCC-1, UCC-2, UCC-3, financing statements and fixture filings; federal tax liens; California state, county and city tax liens; mechanics liens and amendments; judgment recordings and assignments; lis pendens and amendments; claim, assessment, abatement and other statutory liens; explicit lien releases, removals and cancellations.
• Source: Merced County Assessor-Clerk-Recorder public recorded-document index.
• Freshness: the public index is updated as documents are recorded. A browse run reads the most recent recordings first, so you get the newest liens without maintaining a date cursor.
• History: the public index covers recordings from 1963 to present.

Scope guard

Only lien, judgment, lis-pendens and UCC families are requested. Deeds, deeds of trust, mortgages, mortgage releases, plats, marriage records, military discharges, death certificates and other non-lien instruments are never requested. Child-support, family-support, CSE, welfare, divorce, custody, paternity and protection-order names are filtered out. Generic RELEASE, CANCELLATION and DISMISSAL codes are not requested because they can release deeds of trust or other non-lien instruments. The dataset is public-record research, not an FCRA consumer report.

Pricing

• $0.03 per returned record on the result event.
• $0.003 actor-start event.
• $0.033 minimum charge.
• No charge for a run that returns no matching records: the actor emits one uncharged error row instead.
• Free Apify users are capped at 10 returned records per run.

FAQ

Does this return lien amounts? No. Merced County's public detail page does not publish the lien amount, so the actor leaves amount fields out rather than guessing.

Can I search by lender or secured party? Yes. Use securedPartyNames. The actor checks the secured-party side after it maps the county's grantor/grantee convention for each document type.

What is a UCC-3? It is the amendment form used for continuations, assignments, amendments and terminations. Merced County publishes a single UCC-3 type, so the actor returns the filing with its published parties and marks the release status unknown instead of guessing the subtype.

Why are some releases missing? The actor includes explicit lien releases, removals and cancellations. It deliberately excludes generic release codes that can release mortgages or deeds of trust.

Is this a consumer credit report? No. It is public-record research for business, legal and due-diligence workflows. Do not use it for credit, employment, tenant or other FCRA-regulated decisions.

Related LienIntel actors

LienIntel publishes other dedicated county recorder indexes and state UCC feeds, including Orange County CA, Utah County UT, Nassau County NY, Suffolk County NY, Tompkins County NY, Kent County DE, Berks County PA, Stark County OH, Wayne County MI, Arapahoe County CO, Pitkin County CO, Harris County TX and Johnson County TX. Each actor covers one distinct public source.