Resolving a clouded title

[Brian Kessler]

Good morning BP community! I would like to take a moment to introduce myself. I've been an avid follower of this site for over two years now listening to the podcasts and reading the threads. Unfortunately this is my first time reaching out to everyone. I am a rehab flipper in the Charleston SC market and am about to close on another project when a sticky title issue came up. Here's the situation......

To begin , we have a title company willing to provide title insurance but as a flipper we are concerned with the resale of the property. The sellers of the house in question refinanced the property back in 2001 at which time mortgage company (B) paid/satisfied the mortgage that mortgage company (A) held. Fast forward to 2016, and there is still a lien on the house by mortgage company (A) because they never removed it to show satisfaction of the note. Unfortunately the sellers have no proof of satisfying the mortgage that company (A) held except an unsigned HUD from the refinance docs. And to make matters even worse, mortgage company (A) is no longer in business, AND mortgage company (B) sold the loan and also is no longer in business, AND if that's not enough, the closing attorney that did the refi close has also passed and due to the fact that this was all 15 years ago there is no paper trail and no mortgage company still in business to remove the lien.

Does anyone have any thoughts or experience with something like this and how  to move forward? Thank you all in advance and I apologize for writing this book :)

Brian Kessler