How to find out how much is owed on the mortgage

[John Yu]

There is a short sale I am interested in Colorado. Does anyone know how to find out how much someone owes on their mortgage? This property is in Douglas County, will I be able to find this out on the county website? 

[Mike H.]

There is only 1 way to know exactly how much is owed on a loan.

Get the seller to authorize their lender to share the information with you.

The only other option would be to see how much the loan was recorded for during the purchase. Check that there are no secondary liens. And then work backwards as best you can based on what you think the terms of the mortgage are.

I think some counties allow you to see the recorded mortgage. If so, you can figure out from there pretty easily.  i.e If initial loan amount on March 1, 2010 was for 100k and their terms were a 30 yr mortgage at 4.5%, you can tell what the payments are and what the amortization schedule would look like to see how much of the principal has been paid off by now.

What you can't tell though is how many payments behind they are, late fees, penalties, etc.

Thats why I would say the only real way to get that number is to get the seller to authorize the lender to share their loan information with you.