Why title should be checked at contract, not near closing

One letter in a 1994 deed is a genuinely interesting title problem. The chain has to be unambiguous, and a misspelling makes it ambiguous, so someone has to swear the two names belong to the same person. What the fix looks like varies by state and by underwriter, which is why an affidavit request is the normal response rather than a shrug.

Ordering the search early is the right call and I'd go further. In underwriting, probate should carry a longer expected timeline as a matter of course, not as a surprise. If the average probate deal takes 60 days instead of 21, a 22k fee isn't 22k, it's 22k spread over three times the calendar and three times the chance a family member changes their mind.

The daughter deciding to list it is the part that was probably coming, honestly. Six weeks of delay gives everyone time to google the address.

@tylerbrooks9 that's it exactly. Time is the enemy of a motivated seller. Every week you spend fixing something on your end is a week their motivation cools.

Did the title company flag the misspelling on the preliminary, or was it only when they went to write the policy? I ask because a prelim isn't a commitment and I've seen people treat it like one.

Reading this as a first time buyer of anything and I didn't know a name could be spelled wrong on a deed and just sit there for thirty years.

@paulgrant17 it happens constantly. Recorders record what's handed to them. Nobody proofreads a 1994 deed until someone tries to sell. @carlos_nunez the lending side of this is that the buyer's lender would have found the same problem and killed it anyway, so the 22k was never really there. It just surfaced earlier and for free.

Land is worse. Take a parcel where the 1961 deed calls a boundary by a fence that stopped existing decades ago. Nobody cares until the day somebody cares.

@nicole_adeyemi the fence one is going to cost somebody a survey and a lawyer eventually, and it will not be a fun month.

22k is a real fee and losing it to a letter is brutal. My version was losing a 7k assignment because the seller had a judgment from a hospital she'd forgotten about and the payoff ate the whole spread. Same shape. The house was fine, the paper wasn't.

@joe_delgado5 the forgotten medical judgment shows up more than anything else. People genuinely do not remember, they think a payment plan means it is gone.

So the actual takeaway is that you now spend money on searches for deals that die. That's the part beginners skip. Everything that makes you reliable costs something and doesn't show up as a line on the deals that work.