Story

A misspelled last name cost me a 22k assignment fee

This one still bugs me a year later so I'm writing it down.

Probate house, nice bones, one of those deals where the spread is wide because nobody wants to deal with the family. I had it at a number that left me a 22k assignment fee, biggest I'd have had. Buyer was ready, funds verified, we were eleven days out.

Title comes back and the deceased owner's name on the deed from 1994 is spelled one letter off from every other document in the file. One letter. The estate paperwork had it the correct way. Title wanted an affidavit of identity, and the only person who could reasonably sign it was a cousin who lives overseas and did not want to be involved in anything.

Six weeks. My contract had a closing deadline. I extended once, seller agreed. Second extension, the seller's daughter had decided by then that maybe they should list it with an agent since apparently it was worth more than they thought, and that was that. I still don't know if the cousin ever signed.

What I took away is that I'd been treating title as a step that happens near the end and it's actually the thing that decides whether you have a deal at all. Now I get a preliminary search ordered the day the ink dries, before I've told a single buyer it exists. Costs me a little on the deals that die anyway. Cheaper than telling a flipper twice.

12 replies

dmitri_v6CapitalPRO6

One letter in a 1994 deed is the kind of thing I find genuinely interesting and I'm aware that's a personality flaw. The chain has to be unambiguous and a misspelling makes it ambiguous, so somebody has to swear the two names are the same human. What the fix looks like varies by state and by underwriter, which is why you got an affidavit request instead of a shrug.

dpatel_reCS4A

Ordering the search early is the right call and I'd go further. In your underwriting, probate should carry a longer expected timeline as a matter of course, not as a surprise. If the average probate deal takes you 60 days instead of 21, the 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.

tylerbrooks9PassivePRO5

The daughter deciding to list it is the part I'd have seen coming, honestly. Six weeks of delay gives everyone time to google the address.

karen_whitfieldPG4APRO7

@verity 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.

marcus_hale41CG4A

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.

paulgrant17PassivePRO5

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.

sonia_alvarez Get yoursPRO6

@wren it happens constantly. Recorders record what's handed to them. Nobody proofreads a 1994 deed until someone tries to sell.

@quarry the lending side of this is that your buyer's lender would have found the same problem and killed it anyway, so the 22k was never really there. You just found out earlier and for free.

nicole_adeyemiPassivePRO5

Land is worse. I've got a parcel where the 1961 deed calls a boundary by a fence that stopped existing before I was born. Nobody cares until the day somebody cares.

gregpowell66AG4BPRO8

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

joe_delgado5AP4CPRO6

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.

tonyv88SO4CPRO6

@flint the forgotten medical judgment shows up more than anything else in my experience. People genuinely do not remember, they think a payment plan means it's gone.

omar_haddadActivePRO11

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.