Buying a home can be harrowing. Neighborhoods, schools, and amenities are just a few considerations. Getting a good deal is also critical. Your home is your castle . . . and your nest egg! No one can guarantee a risk-free transaction but having your signed purchase and sale contract reviewed by a real estate attorney is a safeguard against expensive mistakes, including title issues.
Title Issues During the Real Estate Transaction
Title issues have to do with who else may have valid ownership interests in the property you are buying. Title issues can take many forms, but include problems of chain-of-title, easements, surveys of record, liens, encumbrances, and disputes over property boundaries. Title issues are generally not visible to the naked eye, so they often go unnoticed, and unaccounted for.
Although invisible, title issues can have a devastating effect on the market value of a property. Imagine you made an offer on beautiful, wooded acreage only to discover during inspection contingency that a trucking easement divides the parcel in half. The noise, dust, and impairment to use of the trucking easement reduces the value of the property. Did your offer reflect the value of the property with the easement, or without it?
Not knowing about and contesting issues of title is perhaps the largest source of buyer’s remorse after the close of escrow.
Every contract for purchase and sale includes a paragraph regarding title. This paragraph provides a specified time period for the buyer to review the title report and negotiate with the seller regarding circumstances documented in the report. If circumstances documented in the title report are not contested during this period, the buyer accepts the status of the title as-is.
Timely Contract Solutions
Buyers: Use TC Review to understand title issues discovered during your due diligence period and identify choices you have under the signed contract. Get answers to your questions. Identify solutions. Be prepared with legal options if adverse or unforeseen circumstances arise.
Sellers: Use TC Review to understand your legal position and identify choices you have under the signed contract. FSBO’s may need protection from off-the-shelf contracts that don’t fit the circumstances of their sale. Be prepared with legal options if adverse or unforeseen circumstances arise.
Use TC Review to anticipate and avoid larger problems down the line … and to sleep better at night!
This posting is not legal advice. Legal advice is based on specific facts. This information is necessarily general in nature.