Hi Jay, thanks for the reply.
@John M. title companies will run prelims as you allude to for free for their bigger RE brokers and or investors.. however a one off person general is charged.. now they may not pay the bill as your billed after its done.
Yes, at times the individual investor may want to check a property using the Public Record at the County Recorder's Office. It's not as hard to do as most people expect. All liens and ownership are Public Record, anyone can check the Public Record, it is the law everywhere in the US to my knowledge.
I remember one particular search I did for a client. I discovered he had a paternity lien against his property. The gentleman was 72 years old. He was quite surprised to learn this!!
It turns out both he and his son had the same name, not uncommon. I told him the name of the woman filing the lien. It was the son's girlfriend! Perhaps now an ex-girlfriend (or wife). The son had no ownership in the property.
A word to the wise. Anyone can file a lien and many times the County Recorder (County Courthouse in the East) has no way to determine if the lien is legitimate. The CR leaves that up to the registered owner of the property. The CR will remove an illegitimate lien if the registered owner-property tax payer can prove it.
That lien had been on the property for years but my client never knew. I was able to remove it by working with the county recorder.
I didn't charge myself or the client for the service, the CR office was very helpful and took little time to accomplish.
Out east these Attorney shops in many states Have to hire a Title abstractor to physically go to the courthouse and manually pull title..
Yes, true but individuals can do that too. In the West, California, our statehood is "relatively" young so our property records only go back about 160 years. So we have much less searching to do than Eastern States.
Usually it is only necessary to search Title back to the previous issue of Title Insurance. For example if the last recorded sale of the property was 10 years ago then the Title Insurance from that sale insured the chain of title to that date (otherwise the deal wouldn't have completed).
It isn't hard to examine liens over a 10 or 20 or 30 year period if the ownership hasn't changed.
Of course I don't INSURE my Title searches, that's why God invented Title Insurance companies. I let them do that at closing time.
( I know in MS and SC were I do quite a bit of business its this way) So to that end the attorney many times does not Pull title to the last week of the closing.. As they don't want to get stiffed for the abstract fee... The attorney must pay the abstractor then get reimbursed by the buyer or seller depending on who is paying for what according to the contract.. This leads to all sorts of problems in my mind.. I have had more than one deal fall apart within a week of closing simply because title was not pulled until late in the game and there were issues.
Were as your correct our title companies have their own plant and its all digitized and they can do a full title search same day if you have enough juice with them.. 3 days max.
In California there can be a two week delay between the time the Title Plant updates it's records to the most recent additions filed in the County Recorder's office.
Plus you can get a TRIO in 5 minutes from most customer service departments at the title company.. this is a copy of the last recorded deed, the tax records and maps.. we can call customer service as stated and have that e mailed to us while we are talking to the rep on the phone... You simply can't do that out east in Attorney states..
So basically in my mind for those in the distressed asset business its far easier to operate here than it is in those states.
Especially when I was doing foreclosure rescue before the laws changed and those that wanted to be compliant with the law quit working those ( like me )
Very interesting Jay --- thanks,
John M.
