I meant to post about a piece of mail we got the other day from our attorney’s office. I dreaded opening the envelope, but to my surprise we found our recorded land deed in the envelope. It was finally successfully recorded in October 2007. Now bear in mind – we bought this land TWO YEARS AGO. But we found out last year that our attorney’s office failed to put down the proper land description on the deed, and so our county rejected the document. But our attorney failed to fix the problem and send it back in, and it was only when I called to find out about property taxes that I discovered that the deed had never been recorded and the county still showed the gentleman who sold us the land as being the owner.
Needless to say, I was more than a little frustrated. The reason it is frustrating is that I’m positive that this would cause trouble should we end up needing to sell the property. I can easily see a title insurance company deciding that our documents are not in order and that somehow we are at fault. Now I’m not looking to sell our land (as I posted last night – I’m EXCITED about building on our land), but if for any reason we need the service of title companies in relation to our land, I’m hoping that the inadequacy of this attorney doesn’t reflect poorly on us.
Don’t know what title insurance is? Well, the definition of title insurance:
noun. a policy issued by an insurance company guaranteeing that the title to a parcel of real property is clear and properly in the name of the title owner and that the owner has the right to deed the property (convey or sell) to another. Should a problem later arise with the title (such as an inaccurate description), the insurance company will pay the damages to the new title holder or secured lender or take steps to correct the problem.
I just hope the description on the now-recorded deed is correct (it should be since it was file stamped by the county in October) and that when we go to build we don’t come into any unresolved issues.