What A Title Search Turns Up Before Closing

A title search reconstructs a property's recorded history and asks whether anything still attaches to it. Most searches are uneventful, and the exceptions are why closings sometimes pause without warning.

The chain of title is assembled first

The examiner traces transfers backward through the public records, linking each deed to the one before it. The aim is an unbroken sequence in which every owner properly conveyed to the next.

Breaks appear for ordinary reasons. A deed signed by only one spouse, an estate that was never fully administered, or a name that changed through marriage can leave a link that does not close cleanly.

How far back the search runs depends on state practice and on whether a prior policy or abstract exists. Local rules, not the buyer, decide the depth of the review.

Monetary claims against the property

Mortgages, judgment liens, unpaid property taxes, homeowner association assessments and contractor liens all appear in the records. Each is a claim that ordinarily has to be resolved for clear title to pass.

Some are straightforward: the seller's mortgage is paid from proceeds at closing. Others require work, particularly liens that were satisfied years ago but never released on the record.

Judgments create a common complication because they can attach by name. A judgment against a person with a similar name has to be cleared as unrelated before it stops holding up a file.

Rights held by other people

Not everything found is a debt. Utility easements, shared driveway rights, access agreements and recorded restrictions describe things other parties are entitled to do, or the owner is not.

These usually survive the sale. They are disclosed rather than removed, because they run with the land and bind whoever owns it next.

Their significance depends entirely on plans for the property. A recorded setback or use restriction matters far more to a buyer intending to build than to one who is not.

What the search cannot see

The search reads recorded documents. Matters that were never recorded — an unwritten agreement, a boundary encroachment, an unfiled claim — do not appear in it.

Physical facts also sit outside its reach. A fence in the wrong place or a shed crossing a line is found by a survey, not by an examiner reading the index.

That limitation is why title insurance, surveys and inspections exist alongside the search rather than in place of it. Each covers a different category of risk.

Where the results go next

Findings are set out in a commitment or preliminary report listing what must be cleared before closing and what will remain as exceptions. Reading it is part of the buyer's job, not a formality.

Search standards, curative procedures and the effect of particular defects vary by state and change over time. Unfamiliar items on a commitment belong with a real estate attorney or the title company that issued it.