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Is a 2.1M contract even real until the title company confirms the seller owns it free and clear

petrov_danpetrov_danActivePRO11

My title rep said something to me Tuesday that I cannot stop thinking about. She said "the higher the number on the contract, the more creative the ownership situation tends to be." We were talking about a different deal entirely but it landed weird. I have been sitting on a 2.1M estate that the seller says is his outright, no partners, no liens, straightforward. He said it the same way people say things when they have not actually checked. Survey is not back yet on my infill project so I have time to be patient here, and I am using it to run this thing down before I go find a buyer. Title search through my attorney, not the seller's. Probate flag came back on a property I looked at in March and the seller genuinely did not know there was a sibling with a claim. That one sat for four months before the estate sorted itself out and by then the buyer I had walked. I cannot afford that on a number this size. Curious whether anybody here has run into fractured ownership on a property the seller presented as clean, and how far into the process you were when it surfaced.

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Your title rep is describing something real. High-value properties accumulate history, refinances, estate transfers, divorce settlements, partnership agreements, and the seller often knows the rough outline but not the recorded detail. A $2.1M estate sitting in one person's name can still carry a deed of trust (a lender's claim recorded against the property), an old judgment lien, or an heir's interest from a prior owner's estate that never got properly cleared.

Your March experience is the right mental model. The seller was not lying, he genuinely did not know his sibling had a recorded interest. That happens more at the luxury end, where properties pass through estates and informal agreements over decades, and nobody files the paperwork cleanly every time.

What you are doing, running the title search through your own attorney before you go find a buyer, is exactly the sequence the strategy guide recommends for the disposition side. You want clean title confirmed before you bring a buyer in, because a luxury cash buyer who gets four weeks into due diligence and then hits a title problem will walk, and word travels in a thin buyer pool.

A few things worth asking your attorney to look at specifically: any open probate filings tied to prior owners, recorded easements or access disputes (these surface in surveys but show up in title too), and whether the current deed was transferred via a trust with multiple trustees who all needed to sign.

I am not sure whether your attorney is pulling a full title commitment or a preliminary search, and that distinction matters at this price point. A full commitment is what I would confirm with them.

What did the title search come back with so far, and is your attorney flagging anything on the chain of ownership going back ten or fifteen years?

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