Stephanie LeVonne wrote an interesting and valuable piece on SearchEngineLand with regard to buying a domain for the purposes of SEO and site migration.

Stephanie put together a checklist of 10 things to do to make sure the new domain will be right for a site change.

Here is #1:

1. Google Search Console

Obtaining access to the Google Search Console account is critical for analyzing the health of the domain you’re looking to acquire. If you don’t have the credentials to this account, it’s worthwhile to reach out to the current admin and request access. Likewise, if this property hasn’t been set up, you can request for it to be done at this time.

Once logged into the Search Console account, you’ll want to go to Search Traffic > Manual Actions and look for any notes on the account.

You can also click on Security Issues, which will notify you if Google suspects that your website has been hacked.

While you can still make a valid assessment about the domain’s health by performing other checks, it’s highly recommended that you access Google Search Console if possible, since this is the only way to see manual action penalties on the domain.

I never really thought about asking for access to GSC, it certainly makes a lot of sense.

You can read the other 9 points here