Make Sure Your Property Transfer Is Legal
We all know real estate brokers and agents, and we’re pretty familiar with what they do. Agents are licensed only to work for brokers, and together they form a network of professionals who earn their living or a side-line income in the real estate business. When you sell your house you can choose whether to list with an agent or not, and when I need to sell my house many times I make the choice to sell my house myself.
However, I wouldn’t try to sell by owner if I didn’t have good working relationships with title companies. I’ve found that most people have less knowledge about title companies compared to their basic knowledge of real estate agents and brokers. I’ll be sharing information about title companies in this article, and explaining why they are very important when I sell my house.
Just to make sure we’re all clear on what a title company does, it is in the business of examining and insuring the title to real estate for the purpose of transfer of ownership. Because the all properties, houses, buildings and raw land have a legal history of ownership that is updated each time the property changes hands there is a procedure for assuring that these legal histories are accurate and consistent. Part of a property’s legal history, besides transfer of ownership, are documents filed as liens against the property by lenders, taxing authorities and other types of creditors.
A creditor who has court authority to place a lien on a property because the property owner owes money files documents in the county where the property is located and that creates a lien. Liens are an important part of the legal history of a property, and when liens are released by lenders and other creditors, those creditors must file a lien release form releasing the previous property owner from liability on the property.
Lien releases are so important that whenever I buy a house or sell my house I always have a title company perform a current title search on the legal history of the house. Title companies employ very skilled researchers as well as lawyers who make sure that I get timely information to make an informed decision about whether to buy a property, or whether it does not have clear title and I should stay away from it. When I sell a home of course I’m obligated to provide clear title to my buyer, meaning I must provide certification that there are no liens on the title.
Because I’m a real estate investor I have working relationships with several title companies in the parts of the country where I buy and sell real estate. Naturally, I develop preferences and find the people with whom I’m most comfortable working regularly. You should call a few title companies when you prepare to sell a house yourself. That way, you’ll have a relationship set up when the time comes to close your sale.