Title company 'never did title search'

[cmball]

What is the name of your state?What is the name of your state?--Maryland

I purchased a home September 2002, with title search and title insurance included at closing. In August 2003 I checked my tax records online and found the previous owners were still listed as owning my property.

After 6 months of calls and letters, I finally talked to someone helpful at the county assessment office in March 2004. She told me that when the road in front of my property was widened about 12 years ago, the deed was never changed to reflect the change in property line.

The woman at the assessment office said that 'there was no way that the title company could have performed a title search' and that I should have never been able to go to settlement. The title company then told her they would fix the problem.

It has now been 2 months and I still don't have clear title; I've called and sent a letter to the state attorney general's office to get the title company to rectify the situation. Yesterday they told me to bring my deed to their office and that 'they can fix this very quickly'.

Question 1: How are they going to 'fix' it quickly?
Question 2: Shouldn't I have received a copy of the title insurance policy and/or title search? I never received either.
Question 3: Should I trust them? Do I have any legal recourse if they did, in fact, NOT perform a title search?

[HomeGuru]

[quote=cmball]What is the name of your state?What is the name of your state?--Maryland

I purchased a home September 2002, with title search and title insurance included at closing. In August 2003 I checked my tax records online and found the previous owners were still listed as owning my property.

After 6 months of calls and letters, I finally talked to someone helpful at the county assessment office in March 2004. She told me that when the road in front of my property was widened about 12 years ago, the deed was never changed to reflect the change in property line.

The woman at the assessment office said that 'there was no way that the title company could have performed a title search' and that I should have never been able to go to settlement. The title company then told her they would fix the problem.

It has now been 2 months and I still don't have clear title; I've called and sent a letter to the state attorney general's office to get the title company to rectify the situation. Yesterday they told me to bring my deed to their office and that 'they can fix this very quickly'.

Question 1: How are they going to 'fix' it quickly?

**A: good question.
*****
Question 2: Shouldn't I have received a copy of the title insurance policy and/or title search? I never received either.

**A: yes, and why did you not ask for these or refuse to close.
********
Question 3: Should I trust them?

**A: of course not.
*****

**A: this is question 4: "Do I have any legal recourse if they did, in fact, NOT perform a title search?"

Answer: yes, hire an attorney. Do not deal with them directly or give them your deed.

[cmball]

Maryland

Question 1: How are they going to 'fix' it quickly?

**A: good question.
*****
>>Confirms my suspicions. Thanks.

Question 2: Shouldn't I have received a copy of the title insurance policy and/or title search? I never received either.

**A: yes, and why did you not ask for these or refuse to close.
********

>>In my defense, the entire transaction was a fiasco and I spent the first three months total chaos, and I struggled to stay, at the very least, sane. The veiled threat from everyone was that if I protested anything in the insane Maryland real estate market I might lose the house:

* insurance company never did paperwork to write new policy, had to find new company 4 days before closing, got gouged on price
* final walk-through pushed back to day of settlement
* previous owners (elderly, with one in poor health) still had 6 vanloads of JUNK in the house at walkthrough. I made the textbook error of showing compassion.
* previous owner kept letting himself into house after settlement
* moving van company reneged on a 'guaranteed reservation' (ever move an entire household in a Dodge Caravan and a '68 VW bus?)
* postman at old house decided to stop my mail early (without my permission), resulting in three weeks' worth of mail living in limbo somewhere
* roof leaked the first day, sink leaked the first day (but since the previous owner was letting himself back into the house after closing, he fixed the leaky sink)
* spent 40 hours the first week taking previous owner's junk to the dump
* spent every major holiday mopping as the basement flooded repeatedly in the first few months
* in the first six months, spent $20K on all of the 'satisfactory' items the home inspector noted...the house has major foundation problems [whole front of house had no footers] and will require a substantial amount to fix; the porch is held up by jacks; the furnace is marginal; when the basement flooded the whole house moved and EVERY plaster wall cracked; the previous owner painted over punky wood, so now I have carpenter ant damage; etc., etc.

So yes, I dropped the ball on a lot of things I normally would not have missed if I had a normal person's life.


Question 3: Should I trust them?

**A: of course not.
*****
>>again, thanks.

**A: this is question 4: "Do I have any legal recourse if they did, in fact, NOT perform a title search?"

Answer: yes, hire an attorney. Do not deal with them directly or give them your deed.

>>I have three referrals for attorneys and will contact them. If the title company didn't do a title search, can I sue for damages, including the difference in total property acreage, overpayment of taxes, general expenses and mortal anguish?

[HomeGuru]

Good luck and the title company should have E&O insurance. Go after that.

Dear Cmball,
That really sucks. if it makes you feel any better, I'm trying to buy a house in MD, and I can definitely commiserate on the whacked out market here. Sometimes people submit contracts without even properly looking at the property. I looked at a house that had a contract on in it the day of going on the market. An aquaintance of mine keeps losing bids, even though she put in 20 grand in escalation on the last house she bid. It finally seems like we MAY close next week, and I know that the owner is going to leave all his crap there (maybe even his pets). We put in a clause, that if he leaves crap behind, two grand comes off at settlement. Our prospective house may not have back door locks (we'll be installing those), if we didn't the owner would definitely come a-visitin'. It's a crazy crazy world! Good luck!

[HomeGuru]

yes.....ugh!

[cmball]

Yep, I've heard the same stories--folks submitting 6, 7, 8 or more contracts on different houses before they finally get one...overbidding by tens of thousands of dollars. I can't decide whether the bottom will fall out like it did in the 80s, or whether Baltimore will become another overpriced San Francisco real estate market. Hard to imagine the same houses that languished for up to a year when I bought my first house 11 years ago are the same ones that have quadrupled in price.

The lessons I have learned for next time:

1. Hire a lawyer for the title search instead of going through a title company. The woman at the county said that she had a stack '6 inches high' of letters from people like me who had problems with title companies.

2. Avoid a Realtor as much as possible. I knew that both the seller's and the buyer's Realtors are really working for the buyer, yet I still got schweened. And I did all of the work except for actually putting the key in the lock when I visited houses I was considering.

3. Instead of hiring a home inspector, I'll drag along my friends who have 30+ years of construction experience. I asked all of the right questions of the inspector, got the report confirming, contacted him after things started going south...but the way the laws are written in Maryland I don't have much recourse against his incompetence or fraud.

4. I'll never close at the end of the month again--I think that exacerbated every problem I had, since every vendor I worked with was swamped. It's not worth it to save money at settlement.

5. oh, heck. I'll try to never buy property in Maryland again.

[HomeGuru]

Originally Posted by cmball

Yep, I've heard the same stories--folks submitting 6, 7, 8 or more contracts on different houses before they finally get one...overbidding by tens of thousands of dollars. I can't decide whether the bottom will fall out like it did in the 80s, or whether Baltimore will become another overpriced San Francisco real estate market. Hard to imagine the same houses that languished for up to a year when I bought my first house 11 years ago are the same ones that have quadrupled in price.

The lessons I have learned for next time:

1. Hire a lawyer for the title search instead of going through a title company. The woman at the county said that she had a stack '6 inches high' of letters from people like me who had problems with title companies.

2. Avoid a Realtor as much as possible. I knew that both the seller's and the buyer's Realtors are really working for the buyer, yet I still got schweened. And I did all of the work except for actually putting the key in the lock when I visited houses I was considering.

3. Instead of hiring a home inspector, I'll drag along my friends who have 30+ years of construction experience. I asked all of the right questions of the inspector, got the report confirming, contacted him after things started going south...but the way the laws are written in Maryland I don't have much recourse against his incompetence or fraud.

4. I'll never close at the end of the month again--I think that exacerbated every problem I had, since every vendor I worked with was swamped. It's not worth it to save money at settlement.

5. oh, heck. I'll try to never buy property in Maryland again.

**A: I do not agree with numbers 1-4.

It really is too bad that you've had such a negative experience.

Just to illustrate the ever ongoing craziness of the DC-metro market: my friend's neighbor sold his house in Bethesda, MD for $540,000 (two blocks from NIH). The new owners just leveled the house and are building a new one...so basically they just paid half a million for a lot. I don't know whether the market bubble here will ever burst. I think (hope) that the market will maintain (maybe not at the same crazy rate) its value.

I think now is the time to buy some of these burned out husks of townhouses in Baltimore (you can get 'em for $20,000- actually in the 80's they were giving away townhouses in Federal Hill and now these things are selling for $200,000 and up...

I'm actually pretty happy with the way my agent is handling things. But then again the guy only does it for fun (he's a general contractor, who buys houses in "pooerer" areas and fixes them up and resells them. He got his real estate license so he could buy and sell home without an agent. So I guess that I'm luck that we've got a friend in the business. Also, the title company did find that the house was in foreclosure and have negatiated with the mortage companie's attorney's in our favor. Also, our mortgage broker and loan officer have been VERY prompt in answering all my phone-calls (even on Saturday night). They have been busting their balls trying to get this thing closed by the end of the next week. The way it seems to me...if our deal falls through, they don't get paid....that should be enough of a motivator for most folks.

Again, sorry that you've had such a hard time, but really they're not all bad. Sometimes though, when it rains it pours

-k

[cmball]

touché to Home Guru: It might be time to leave Maryland and go west...even if I were to sell the beast of a house I have now, I'd never be able to afford another house in Maryland in the current market.

I've lived in some pretty marginal areas in the city, and have had very few significant problems. The neighborhood I live in now is by no means 'upscale', but it's pretty safe. I sold my old house because the neighborhood started to shift and I no longer felt safe walking home late at night.

There's a group of people buying row homes in Reservoir Hill--one of the worst drug areas in Baltimore City. More power to 'em, and if I were 20 years younger I might consider it. But an article in the paper indicated that one house under renovation had been broken into something like six times in as many months, and the minute developers heard about this group they rushed out and bought all of the other scabby homes on speculation--tripling and quadrupling the prices. So a brownstone that might have been purchased for $50k [reasonable, considering you're looking at up to six-figure renovation costs] shot up to $200k and more [you've got to be kidding].

On the current misery: I've contacted the title company and asked them for copies of the title policy and search. No word back yet...

[HomeGuru]

Call the title company daily.

when one lives in MD, sometimes twice daily is appropriate...sure pisses them off but usually gets them off their asses.

I looked at some townhomes around Charles St...I looked at this cool townhouse, that was across the street from some nasty projects (around the art school) but basically I really needed something that I could live in while improvements were made (which i think i found in the halethorpe/arbutus area). I was also not willing to guard my house with a shotgun. I think I'd rather feel at least semi-safe.

good luck !

[cmball]

Update--I received a message today from the title company:

"Hello, I'm calling from xxx title company, and we have re-recorded the certified, true copy of the deed as well as the deed of trust, where we corrected the legal description. We are also sending out a copy of the title report and a copy of the homeowner's policy.

"I also wanted to point out that the seller's title deed was wrong as well...she inherited the title from her mother [well, actually it was her aunt], and the mother had already deeded out a part of the property to the county for the road widening...that was what the saving and accepting [???] was that was missing from your deed.

"It was also missing from the seller's deed, but it was recorded today, and everything should be fine now."

[HomeGuru]

Originally Posted by cmball

Update--I received a message today from the title company:

"Hello, I'm calling from xxx title company, and we have re-recorded the certified, true copy of the deed as well as the deed of trust, where we corrected the legal description. We are also sending out a copy of the title report and a copy of the homeowner's policy.

"I also wanted to point out that the seller's title deed was wrong as well...she inherited the title from her mother [well, actually it was her aunt], and the mother had already deeded out a part of the property to the county for the road widening...that was what the saving and accepting [???] was that was missing from your deed.

"It was also missing from the seller's deed, but it was recorded today, and everything should be fine now."

**A: once you get copies of these docs, take them and the old ones to a real estate attorney for review.

[cmball]

Roger Wilco. Will do. Thanks! I'll post a follow-up.