- Hey, there, how's it going.
This is Seth from REtipster.com.
In this video I wanna talk to you
about how to resolve an issue that comes up
with pretty much any real estate deal
that you're trying to close in-house
without a title company.
Now to start with, I never really do this
unless I'm buying a piece of vacant land
that is really, really, really cheap,
like, we're talking a few hundred dollars.
And the full market value of the property
is no more than $5,000.
And the reason that I try to do these kind
of title searches myself
rather than using a title company or an attorney
is because the cost of the property
is just so stinking low
that it doesn't make a whole lot of economic sense
for me to pay two or three times more
to close the property than what I'm paying
for the property in the first place.
So in those situations
when I'm trying to close the deal myself,
something that is just crucially important to do
before you actually get the deed signed
and take ownership of the property is to do a title search.
And this is where you get, what's called,
an abstract of title, which is basically a list
of all the documentation, all the historical recorded deeds,
and other related documents that goes back about 40 years.
And when you have these documents,
you can then look through them
to make sure that there is, what's called,
a clear chain of title to verify
that all the historical deeds
have been transferred appropriately,
there's no gaps in the chain of title,
there's no outstanding mortgages or leans on the property,
all that stuff.
However, in order to do this,
you have to know how to get these documents.
And that's what I wanna show you how to do in this video.
So as you can see here on the screen,
this is what that abstract of title looks like
when you finally get it.
Whenever I order these things,
they usually come to me in the form of a PDF.
And it just shows me all of the historical deeds.
And it looks kinda confusing,
especially if you've never done this before.
And I actually have a separate video
that explains how to look through these documents
and make sense of them.
So in case you wanna check that out,
I will have a link to that video
in the description of this one on YouTube
in case you wanna learn more of the basics
of how that works.
But with that being said,
if you're trying to figure out how to get these documents,
and get the full report showing what the chain of title is,
there's a few different ways to do this.
Now when I first got started in this business,
the way that I would do it
is I would call up a local title company
and just say, hey, I'm looking for a title search
on this property, so not a title commitment,
not a title insurance policy.
I don't want you to close the deal for me.
I just want the title search.
And usually when I would order that,
it would cost a minimum of 150 bucks,
depending on which title company I was working with.
And sometimes I even saw prices
that went up to 350 or even $600, I think
was the most expensive one I'd ever seen,
which is crazy by the way.
That's way too much to pay for a title search.
What I eventually figured out
was that the reason title companies
were charging me so much for these title searches
is because they were just outsourcing the work
to an abstractor.
And an abstractor is basically
a professional title searcher.
And what they do is they go directly to the county,
and they pull all these documents from the county system
related to the property that you're looking at,
and they will compile them and then give them
to the title company, who then gives them to me.
And once I figured this out,
I realized I can actually cut out the middleman
and just go directly to this abstractor,
and it will cost a lot less,
usually somewhere in the range of 50 to $100
when I get it directly from them.
In most cases, it's fairly easy to find abstractors
in whatever county you're working in.
And I'll just show you an example right here.
If you go to search engines like Google
and just type in the county name, state name,
and then words like title search abstractor
or something to that effect, you can usually find
at least a few options right off the bat.
So let's try this out in Kern County, California
and title search abstractor, and just see what comes up.
And right off the bat, we can see these results right here.
I'll just open up these and see what it gives me.
So what I would do at this point
is I would just check out these websites
and see in what counties they provide
these kind of abstractor or title search services.
And I could always just contact them very easily
and just say, hey, I've got this property in this county.
How much would it cost you to give me an abstract of title
on this property, and how long would it take
for you to get me those documents?
And I could do the same thing here, same thing here,
and just get an idea for who can provide what
at what price.
And by the way, I realize if you're working
in a super rural county
that's way out in the middle of nowhere,
sometimes when you do this kinda search
you may not find these big obvious service providers
who can do this kind of thing for you.
So if you're in that situation,
another thing you can do is simply search
for the county recorder or the county registrar of deeds.
Some states use different terminology for that,
but they basically do the exact same thing.
So we'll search for the recorder here.
And I could click on that and then gonna, here,
Contact Us and give 'em a call
and basically just say to them, I'm looking
for a local abstractor who can help me pull
all of the relevant title documents
for a property in Kern County,
or whatever county you're working in.
'Cause the thing is, a lot of times
these counties are very familiar
with who the abstractors are in the area,
because those abstractors are in the system
and regularly pulling these kind of reports
in the assessor or recorder or registrar of deeds.
They're just familiar with them, and they know who they are.
So sometimes you can say, hey, can you just connect me
with one of those local abstractors?
And it's pretty easy to get that contact information
and then reach out to those abstractors directly.
So that's another way you can do it.
Some other options that are out there
are services like this, ProTitleUSA.
What they will do is they actually have
a few different packages you can order from them
where they will get into the county records
and pull up a full list
of who all the historical property owners are
and just show you in a pretty clearcut layout
what the chain of title looks like.
And I'm actually not sure
if they even give you the title documents themselves
or if they just give you this kind of report.
It might depend
on which kind of package you order from them.
Looks like if I click on this one here,
this is usually what I would be getting
if I was working directly with an abstractor.
And it looks like they give you this summary sheet
and then all of the documents.
So it looks like this would be pretty much everything
I would ever want out of a title search.
And maybe I'm just missing it, but I don't see anyplace
on this website that lays out the pricing.
But at one point in the past year or two
I was on this website,
and I think it was a couple hundred bucks
for this kind of report.
And that was one of the reasons why
I haven't historically used these guys that much,
even though it's one of the easiest turnkey ways
to get this kind of information.
That cost of a couple hundred bucks is just more
than what I wanna pay for this kind of thing.
I can't really tell you what your threshold should be
in terms of how much you should or shouldn't pay.
But I know that was one of the things
that came onto my radar
in terms of whether or not I would use them.
And then something else I'll mention is that I know
there's actually people on Fiverr who will offer
these kinda title searching services nationwide.
So that may be worth checking out as well.
Let's just do a quick Fiverr title search
and see what comes up.
And it looks like right off the bat
there is this guy, Scott Shores,
who I've heard of as well and never used myself.
And depending on when you're watching this video,
he may, or may not, still be offering
these services on Fiverr.
But all this to say you could always try searching
for title search services
on a freelancing website like Fiverr.
And you might be able to find somebody like this
who can help you.
And to be clear, this is not a recommendation
or endorsement for this guy in particular.
I'm just showing you that on Fiverr
you can find people like this
who can offer this kind of help.
So that may be worth checking out too.
If we go up here and search for title search,
and we'll see if we can find anybody else.
Yep, so it looks like there's other people
who do this as well.
And it's kinda hard to gauge the quality or reliability
of this kind of work, because it's a fairly dynamic thing
with lots of moving pieces.
It's also one of those things where
if one of these people makes a mistake,
that may or may not come back to bite you in the future.
And they're also not offering you any kind of guarantee
of a clear title like a title company
or a title insurance policy would.
So that's something else to keep in mind.
While these kinds of contractors certainly are
a lot cheaper and will probably make the process faster
and easier for you, it's not necessarily
a fair apples-to-apples comparison
with what you would get from some other options out there.
So it's just something to keep in mind.
But in any event, I hope you can see here
that with just a little bit of creativity and searching
there's a lot of ways that you can find help
with this kind of thing.
So if you're trying to do your own title search,
but you're not sure of the best way
to get these documents in your hands
so you can start reviewing 'em,
those are just a few ideas of how you can scour the web
for assistance in this area.
Hope that's helpful, and I wish you all the best
as you're closing your deal.
Talk to you next time.