Newbie did her first title search

[Account Closed]

It's my first attempt at a title search. Lots of questions came up, and I was just hoping for someone more seasoned than myself to take a look at what I found and give me some tips/recommendations. Thanks in advance for reading!!

I'm looking at some properties on auction.com, and thought I would do a title search on the better ones I think I can sell easily (I have no idea about the kind of work I'm looking at). No online database in my towns, so I had to physically go to Town Hall and look for the titles there.

Here's what I found on property 1 (the owner is listed a person):

• 1986 - Warranty Deed
• 1987 - MECL (what is this?? It lead to a blank paper and I couldn't figure out what this was)
• 1993 - Quit Claim Deed
• 1993 - Mortgage (the trouble starts here... this one was for 165k)
• 1996 - Mortgage (170k)
• 1996 - Assignment
• 1997 - Mortgage ($12,422)
• 1997 - Warranty Deed (didn't understand document very well)
• 1997 - Mortgage (165k)
• 1998 - Mortgage (168k)
• 1999 - Lien ($890.40... the legal document was saying that another city was putting a lien against the owner of the house for that amount... could not understand what it meant)
• 1999 - Mortgage (76k)
• 2003 - Mortgage (265k)
• 2006 - Warranty Deed (to someone in another city for 400k)
• 2006 - Mortgage (380k)
• 2009 - Lis Pendens (I still have to look this one up)
• 2012 - Lien (property taxes amounting to $380)
• 2012 - Lien (more property taxes, this one amounting to $109)
• 2013 - Mortgage (15k... how do they keep being able to get mortgages?)
• 2013 - Order (not sure what this is)
• 2013 - Foreclosure
• 2013 - Quit claim

I will be running for the hills away from this one... It was pretty much the same 2 people getting all these mortgages, by the way. But my big question (because I want to learn) is what does this mess mean? Are all these mortgages still outstanding?? Seriously, can like a billion dollars be owed on a property? If someone won this property at auction, how would they go about cleaning up all this mess?

The second property (owner listed as US Bank National Association):

• 2004 - Mortgage (38,200) (let's call the names on this document People #1)
• 2006 - Power of Attorney (this one is confusing because it says that someone's "attorney-in-fact" has the power to do real estate transactions of this house, but the name on this document is not the name of the owner prior to US Bank National Association or the name of the people on the 2004 Mortgage document)
• 2007 - Quit claim deed (from a Mr. & Mrs. (oddly, they were not the guy on the power of attorney document... or the 2004 Mortgage people) to the owner right before US Bank National Association)
• 2009 - Water lien ($223.58 for the owner right before US Bank)
• 2013 - Foreclosure document (US Bank National vs the previous owner)

This property seems much cleaner than the first one. I might take a shot at this one. Anything I'm missing? The secretary at the Town Hall suggested I do a title search by the owner's name... the owner before US Bank. She's says that's usually how people do it, but why is that? Why are different names coming up in my title search?

Third and final property (the owner is what looks to be a trustee)... I couldn't figure this one out. This Town Hall goes by Owner's name, not the property address... and the Owner was Equitysomething Inc, which looks like a trustee to me. When I looked them up, a whole bunch of documents and properties seemed to be coming up on the computer screen I was using and I got confused. I learned nothing about this property, and it was my last one after an afternoon of driving around to Town Halls so I called it quits. The secretary lady was telling me that if I buy it at auction, they will give me a clean title... my gut was telling me that's not true with auction.com based on what I read by you guys.