Before you offer on a home in California, run its address through the official registry: the California Megan's Law Website, run by California Department of Justice. It is free, it takes two minutes, and it is the check listing sites never do for you.
Run the check
Check the records behind the address before you offer.
Check any address — free preview1. Open the official California registry. 2. Search by the home's street address (a radius or map search works best). 3. Note the counts within a quarter mile, a half mile, and a mile — distance bands tell you more than a single pin. 4. Repeat the search the week you close. Registries update as people move and register new addresses.
Can you get an exact count in California?
Partly — California's official search can produce a count, but only through the route below (a subset, a radius detour, a CAPTCHA or a display cap), so getting the number takes an extra step.
How it works: Disclaimer-gated search by name, address+radius (0.75/1/2/5 mi), city, county or ZIP; results display is capped at 100 per search and a large block of registrants is ZIP-only or not posted at all (Penal Code 290.46 categories), so big-ZIP counts are truncated/subset counts.
Worth knowing: Live fetch landed on the official Disclaimer page (200); DOJ's own statistics page (pulled in search results) confirms the disclosure-category split.
Method checked against the NSOPW state directory on 2026-11-04.
How to read what comes back
Treat the addresses as reported addresses: the system depends on registrants reporting moves and on agencies processing them, so the map is a strong signal, not a guarantee. Judge the pattern around the address — how many, how close, typical for the area or an outlier — and remember the registry lists only people required to register; it is not a crime map.
Check the records behind the address before you offer.
Check any address — free previewHow CurbFacts uses this data
A CurbFacts report summarizes the same public registry data as ZIP-level counts for the address — never offender names or photos. The full California records guide and the California disclosure guide cover the rest of the record file.
Frequently asked questions
Can I get an exact registrant count for a California address?
Partly. Disclaimer-gated search by name, address+radius (0.75/1/2/5 mi), city, county or ZIP; results display is capped at 100 per search and a large block of registrants is ZIP-only or not posted at all (Penal Code 290.46 categories), so big-ZIP counts are truncated/subset counts.
Who runs the California registry?
The California Department of Justice — the official search is the California Megan's Law Website. It is free; if a site asks you to pay for registry results, you are on a data broker.
Does a CurbFacts report show offender names or photos?
No. Reports show the count of registrants in the home's ZIP from state registry data, and link you to the official registry if you want the underlying public record.
Sources: leginfo.legislature.ca.gov · oag.ca.gov · legalclarity.org · ownwell.com
See what the listing doesn't say.
Every CurbFacts report pulls the public records behind an address — flood determination, registry, tax reset, price history, permits, and what's planned nearby — and shows its sources.
Check any address — free preview