Title Company Issues - Advice

[Carl Simon]

Hi BP Community,

Wanted to get your advice on my current troublesome situation in dealing with the title company who handled my first buy-and-hold deal in Baltimore city.  The bottom line question - should I ask for my money back? And if they refuse, any other ideas of recourse?  Is this really as ridiculous as I think it is?? 

The title company made the following three mistakes / inappropriate actions:

1. When I got to the closing table the cost listed on the HUD-1 for their services exceeded their initial quote which was used to select them. I pointed this out and they quietly fixed it.

2. They failed to release my HMS Home Warranty funds to the company. Thankfully no systems failed or repairs were needed while my account was inactive, but if there had been, they would not have been covered.

3. The biggest of all - they failed to release my city taxes collected at closing to the city.  The result was that my property was in delinquent status back in August. My mortgage holder (Chase) did a good job and proactively released funds out of escrow to avoid any immediate repercussions (tax sale?). However this caused my escrow to go into the negative and they sent me a notice saying that I owed a year in taxes or an additional $100/mo. This obviously did not sound right so I called them and did some troubleshooting with their escrow specialist (great guy!) and figured out that the title company never released my initial tax payment.  When I altered them to this they admitted to it and released the funds. 

Overall this is my first hold property this past June and it has gone pretty well.  My main lesson is the things I thought would be hard (tenants, repairs etc.) have been easy, and the issues I thought would be easy/non-issues (city tax increases, water bills, title issues) being hard!  

Any advice you have in dealing with the situation would be appreciated. Or maybe I am just looking for confirmation that I was being ripped off!

Thanks,

Carl