Title seasoning

[Richard Hudson]

I have short sales and pre-approved end-buyers but I'm having problems selling to my pre-approved end buyers because of title seasoning requirements. Lenders are wanting title to be held 90 days to 6 months before I can sell to my end buyers. They call this flipping properties, but flipping properties is not illegal and title seasoning was enforced because of bad investors and realtors, who were forging appraisals, loan fraud and forging titles. I do what is called A to B and B to C transactions where I do double closings with acquistioin funds by buying properties all cash and selling to end-buyers all done in the same day. Are there any lenders, bankers or mortgage brokers that don't have title seasoning requirements and who have pre-approved buyers that I can sell properties too, I buy all cash.

[Jim Wineinger]

Richard: I have run into similar problems in this arena. I can not help with your lender and broker question, but to explain the other reason for the title seasoning you only have to think to many court cases that you might pursue that require that you advertise in a local paper(s) for a period of time before the case is allowed to proceed.

This is done to allow anyone who may have a contrary claim to declare such claim or forgo it.

I deal mainly with tax sale deeds and because the taxing authority only sends their bills out once a year, it is reasonable to realize that it could take a year before someone realizes that they are missing their bill and check into it only to find they do not any longer own the property.

For this reason several title companies will not insure their title searches on tax deeds until 2 years seasoning in my case since the transfer of ownership using a tax deed.

There can be many other such reasons for the seasoning requirement and the amount of seasoning time required may vary. This is done to protect everyone from anyone doing things legally but so fast that you do not have an opportunity to protect your claim.