If you have the address, you can check with the title company.

I have another question to add to yours...we are looking at, and fell in love with a property but it was "bought" on Jan 1,2009 and is supposedly still in escrow how is that possible??
The question is how do you know if escrow has closed or fell through or not?

After you have a fully excecuted contract, it shouldn't take more than a day or two. Although, I had a bank repo take almost 2 weeks last year.

After you have a signed contract by the seller and the buyer you are in escrow in the state of California. The residential purchase agreement is also the joint escrow instructions. I think you might be referring to the opening of an escrow at the company, and that usually happens once the escrow company is selected. Lately with bank owned properties, that can sometime take a few days for the selection. The escrow company will want the good faith deposit to be deposited to the escrow within 3 days usually.

when you sign the contract for the house you are buying a deposit has to go with the contact and then the deposit is put into an escrow account.