Can anybody tell me how a title search is conducted? If the formality of having it done by a professional wasn’t necessary but I wanted to avoid any unpleasant surprises while saving a few bucks, could I do it myself? How difficult is it? Judging by the costs, it looks like a paralegal probably does the actual work.
Title information is found at the County Clerk and Treasure. You could do it your self, but you might miss something. Easements etc.
The title people know where to go and how to do it.
I don’t really like title companies. They seem to have to many disclaimers.
But, what they do do, is guarantee a that the property is free from leans, encroachments and the like.
I doubt you could get a loan without a Title guarantee.
A title search is pretty easy to do, but keep in mind that a title search may not uncover all title problems with the property. Also, the consequences of making a mistake can be so serious that you’re really better off buying title insurance and letting the title insurer do the search.
The following is for entertainment purposes only. If you really are about to do your own title search, consult a reference book prepared for your jurisdiction.
Most property records are indexed by grantor and grantee. So you look up the name of the current owner in the grantee index and find the deed which transferred the property to him or her. The deed will probably be listed by book and page number. You pull the book and page and find the person who transferred the property to that person, and so on, until you’ve traced the deed back sufficiently far (I cannot remember how many years you need to go back to be safe.)
Then you look these folks up in the grantor index to find any encumbrances on the property. For example, John Jones who bought the property in 1954 may have granted a mortgage to First Bank in 1957 before he sold the property in 1960. (The mortgage will (hopefully) have been recorded and will be indexed with John Jones as the grantor.) You then check to make sure that the mortgage was discharged. The fact of the discharge should be recorded in another document (signed by a bank official) – probably there will be a book and page reference written in the margin of the mortgage itself, but you may need to check the grantor/grantee index again.
In this manner, you check to make sure that every encumberance on the property has been extinguished. Of course, some encumberances you will have to live with, such as an easement allowing a neighbor to use a shared driveway. Others should be extinguished when you close on the property, such as the current mortgage.
As noted before, many title problems cannot be picked up with a title search. For example, if a neighbor has been encroaching on the property for the last 30 years. Or if an instrument was misrecorded.
(standard disclaimer about legal advice)