Do I pay for title work on a parcel before anyone has agreed to buy it

What does a title commitment actually cost on a 30k parcel? People keep saying real money and I have no idea if that's 200 or 2,000.

@rigging it varies a lot by state and by whether you're paying for a full commitment or a cheaper preliminary search, so call two local title companies and ask for both prices. In some states an attorney does this work instead of a title company, which changes the number again.

On the actual question, I lean toward ordering early, because the situation you don't want is discovering a defect after a buyer has put money up. That costs you the buyer for every future deal, not just this one.

I order on day one now, every time, and it's because of a parcel I lost. Description in the deed didn't close, the surveyor said the east line ran through a neighbor's barn, and I found out on day 24 with a buyer who'd already told his lender he had it. I got out clean on my inspection contingency and I have never spoken to that buyer again. The commitment cost less than the relationship.

I'm new to this and can't figure out who I'm even ordering from. Do I just call a title company and say open title on this, and do they need something from the seller before they'll do it?

@ember you call and give them the parcel number and a copy of the executed contract, and yes, they generally want the contract because it shows you have a reason to be asking. Ask specifically whether they'll do a search for a wholesaler who's assigning, because some offices are perfectly comfortable with it and some are not, and finding that out on day one is worth as much as the search itself.

I voted for the middle option though. Reading the deed and the tax record yourself takes an hour once you've done it twice, and it catches the loud problems for free. Back taxes, a mortgage nobody mentioned, an owner name that doesn't match the person you're talking to.

Thin margins, lots of deals, and I don't open title until I have a buyer at a number. Half of what I put under contract never gets a buyer at my price, and I'm not funding searches on parcels that die. My inspection period is long enough that I can order the day my buyer signs and still get out if it comes back ugly.

@quarry's barn story is the counterargument and I know it. My answer is that I'd rather lose one buyer occasionally than pay for searches on ten dead tracts a year.

Rural low price points here and the calculation is different when the parcel is 8k. The search can be a meaningful fraction of the whole deal, so I do my own reading first and only order once I'm serious. In some counties the register of deeds has everything scanned online and it's genuinely fast.

@flint and @quarry are both describing volume, just at different points. If you're running enough contracts that a dead search is noise, order everything on day one. If you're doing your third deal ever and the search is 40 percent of your cash, read it yourself and order when a buyer's real. The middle option isn't a compromise, it's what a small operation can afford.