All Forum Posts by: Roger Matthews

Thank you guys. I have purchase many properties but never experienced such a title company who was just so unprepared. We have an appointment with another title company after the labor day. I will inform the group what I find out. I hope they can close this some type of affidavit or something. 

Thank you all. 

Hey Joe, they told me the reason was it is an investment cash out which that backed out of at the closing table. Very odd indeed. I am trying to find out from experts how I should prepare for the next title company if they pull the similar stunt. 

Hi Greg. 

exactly my point. They had us fly in this envronment for a closing that they had no intention to complete. Usually, title companies do their due diligence before scheduling closings. Needles to say, this title company has been a huge disappointment. 

to answer your question, yes we are refinancing it from original owner occupied to as an investment property since it has been rented out for 1.5 years. We also removed the homestead exemption recently from this property.

@AndrewPostell 

Hi Jay, Mike thank you for your response. 
I was told by the manager at the title company that these are Texas laws. All cash our closings must be in Texas.

As far as homestead removal is concerned, I have done that at the county assessor's office but title companys stand is that since it is the only property I have it is by default my homestead in Texas. It sounds really absurd but true.

I have heard about the title insurance endrosment but not sure why they could not get an affidavit from us declaring we will not declare this property as homestead in the future. 

Really frustrated....

First of all, i want to thank everybody in advance. I am grateful to find this forum because my family has been in extreme stress over the past few weeks.

Background is that we relocated from Houston 1.5 years ago to Chicago for my job and decided to rent my personal residence back in Houston. Now, we are trying to buy a house in chicago so we decided to do a cash out refinance on the house in Houston. All went well and we got Clear to Close on our investment property loan. We were told since it's the only property we own in Texas and it is a cash out we have to close in person in Houston. Me and my wife flew to Houston thinking it will be routine signing event and we will be back in the evening. Once we got to the title company we were told closing will not happen. The reason we were told was since this is our only property in Texas, it is considered a homestead thus requires home equity transaction not the investment property. Simply put the title insurance underwriter won't insure title for our property as an investment property. The lender on the other hand will not change the mortgage since it is rented and not owner occupied. Needless to say we had to come wondering what just happened. Now, our mortgage broker has a new title company but I am afraid we will have to same issue. What little research i did told me there was no way to get around it. Then i came to this forum and saw there were others who had the similar  issue. I am requesting to please help me out and let me know if there is anything we can do to close this transaction. I will greatly appreciate your help and feedback. We are desperate.

Ps. Someone mentioned T41 endorsement. Can that help in our case to satisfy title insurance company?