A title company researches, insures, and facilitates the transfer of property ownership: examining title to confirm clean ownership, issuing title insurance to protect buyers and lenders against title defects, and handling the escrow and closing process through which transactions complete, in...
Log in to followWorking through a closing package on a purchase a friend is doing, since I'm trying to understand the loan side properly before I put money anywhere. The settlement statement show…
I'm sitting for my licensing and trying to build a real startup number instead of a guess. So far I have the state title insurance producer license exam and fee, an underwriter ap…
My closing disclosure shows a lender's title policy at around $600 and an owner's policy at around $1,100, and my agent said the seller customarily pays for the owner's policy whe…
First purchase, a small house I plan to live in for a few years and keep as a rental after. The commitment came through yesterday and section two has nine numbered exceptions. Som…
I came into this from a completely different industry and one of the first things I noticed is how much of a title search is pattern matching against recorded documents. Which is…
Small deal, four of us in an LLC buying a 1960s six unit in a second tier market for $612k. Cash portion from members, the rest from a local bank at 70 percent. I was the one hand…
Looking at low price point houses in a county where there's essentially one title and abstract office. Everybody uses them because there is nobody else. Their fee sheet came back…
Our small service team is parked next to closings all week, so this question comes up from first time buyers constantly and I don't think the answer is obvious. In a lot of states…
Bought a four unit last month, $585,000, small city, plan is a light rehab and hold. First real title mess I've been through, so writing it up for anyone who thinks the search is…
An owner I've known for a while wants to sell me 40 percent of her agency and step back over three years. She gave me two years of numbers and I've been staring at them for a week…
I'm helping a small title agency price out what the residential real estate reporting rule actually costs them per file before the March 1, 2026 effective date. They have counsel,…
I've been pricing out what a small title agency actually keeps per file and the remittance split is where my math keeps wobbling. Take a $400k purchase in a filed-rate state: owne…
Our group buys small multifamily across four states and I do the underwriting, almost all of it in single purpose LLCs, and a meaningful share is non-financed. The FinCEN resident…
Writing private notes on residential, first position, small balances, mostly $80k to $250k. My loan documents currently say I select the settlement agent. I've had two borrowers p…
First rental, a $168k three bedroom in a modest inner-ring suburb. At the closing table the settlement statement had the lender's policy on it, which the bank required, and then a…
I've got a file shape I want to understand before it's in front of me: buyer is a Delaware LLC, all cash, no institutional lender anywhere in the deal. Because there's no bank wit…
Purchase price $2.35M, loan $1.65M, 14 unit walk-up in a second tier market. I asked two agencies for a full quote and got numbers far enough apart that I assume I'm comparing dif…
Five years in and I'd always treated title as the buyer's side of the fence. Changed that this spring after a listing died at day 34 over an old lien, which cost me the fee and th…
Somebody asked me this week and I gave a muddier answer than I wanted to, so putting it to the room. A buyer signs a contract, and there's usually a title or settlement company al…
I read the reporting rule text again this week because our closers keep asking what happens when a buyer entity won't hand over beneficial owner information. The rule is effective…