Often, the county/city offices responsible for permitting can be helpful over the phone as well.

Problem I'm running into is things like the mailing address being a tax office, or attorney, and even a liquor store.

Taking comp based upon the amount of the offering (aka success fee, investment banking fee, selling comp, etc), this is a broker-dealer portal (or operating as a branch office of a broker dealer, a la Realty Mogul).

Maybe call the local HUD office and make sure the property and tenant are in good standing with them.  

Call the -county- tax commissioners office.  

Aside for the obvious that due to overbearing taxation obligations we must work entirely too hard in order to achieve in a job setting, which may or may not bother you, I also have personal reasons associated with instability of revenues generated via W2 and 1099.

But, in most places, the County Assessor's office will have a list of tax delinquencies and generally, this is considered public information, unlike the consumption of beans in China.Hope that  addressed your questions :) 

I am no longer in the land game per se'  we peaked in the early 80's  sold 800 lots one year... we had offices in LA and SF and bout  30 sales folks working for us.  

A frequent scenario would be they own their home but cannot yet afford to own their office in our prime $500-$1000/sf commercial hotspots.

I do not have the intention of actually working for the broker, selling houses and joining their rotations for Saturday office hours.