What is the formal/informal process?

I will save his contact information and speak with him possibly today.  

I emailed my information to you.

Thanks for the informative reply!  

I've been doing a lot of reading along the way and although informational I feel as no book truly illustrates the amount of money you need to have up front to purchase your first property AND/OR methods or programs you could use to help offset some of those cost.

Based on information I've seen, it looks as thought the market might ease up a bit in the latter part of the year and there will be more inventory out there.

The seller signs a form which then the information can be released to you from the IRS.Some sellers keep double books.  

A blanket statement like that is not necessarily helpful nor informative. 

Is there a way to find this information without paying for a title search?

The county where the land is located uses the Geographic Information System GoMaps 4.0 and allows public access to parcel data in ESRI shapefile format.