When buying or selling a property, one of the actions that take place is a title deed search. You don’t want any company doing that search, you want one that has years of experience in doing these searches. You want to make sure that the title comes back clean, or if there are any issues that they will find them so they can be handled. Traditional Abstract, LLC, has many decades of experience doing title deed searches and is a trusted partner during the buying and selling process.
What is a Title Deed Search?
Any piece of property has a title deed to it. Among other important items on the deed is the current owner of the property. Additionally, there can be other records tied to that title deed, and those records need to be found to ensure that all past loans, liens, and other obligations have been dealt with and are not still outstanding. When doing a title deed search, there are several steps that need to be done to get all associated records together.
First, a chain of a title search is performed. This entails following the chain of ownership back to when the property first came into existence. In many cases, a town would open a new neighborhood for development, and this would be when the property first came into existence. All owners of the property from that date forward would be cataloged and listed to establish that there are no other people who might lay claim to ownership of the property.
The next step is to perform a tax record search. This search would reveal if property taxes have been paid on the property and if any of them have not been paid. If there are tax issues, it could result in the property being sold by the government to pay for the back taxes or other issues.
The third is a general inspection of the property itself. This can include physically walking the property in question to ensure that was is listed as the boundaries of the property are in fact still the boundaries or if there have been encroachments that would impact the title. For example, someone could have built a fence that crosses over the property line, essentially taking some property from you.
Lastly is a name and judgment search associated with the property. This can include liens against the property or judgments that indicate the individual owes money. These obligations would come before the owner of the property, so they need to be satisfied first. Once the seller has dealt with those issues, they then have a clear title and can sell the property unencumbered.
