I have a bunch of foreclosure properties coming in and some sheriff sales that I’m interested in but I don’t want to have to pay for each individual title search, I’d rather just do it myself.
Is it possible to do my own title search?
Where can I go to do this?
Plan a day and go down to your local courthouse and look up the records. You are going to have some difficulties at first. So, what I recommend is talking with as many people as you can, notice who is there every time you are, and ask them if you could pay them to show you how. Also, perhaps you can meet someone who will charge a lot less that a normal search would cost. The main rule is if you can befriend the workers/regulars, then you will learn enough to accomplish your task.
I must tell you that it will take some time to look up thi info, and in this business time is very valuable. You might want to seriously consider going a few times until meeting someone, and asking them to do searches on the side for you.
Hope that helps!
I second that. What I’ve found is that the clerks are pretty helpful and don’t mind answering your questions so please be sure to take a notebook with you when you go because those notes will come in handy. Once you go there enough, you’ll notice you’re going to see the same faces over and over. Make friends there, especially with the people from the title companies that are doing searches all the time. They don’t seem to mind being bugged with a “I just have a quick question” from time to time.
You need to weigh what your time is worth. If you court house is on line it is fairly easy to do a “pencil search” to eliminate properties that have liens that may pass through such as tax liens and IRS liens.
After you eliminate the obvious it may be worth you while to establish a relationship with a title company. If you close deals with them you should be able to get some good pricing for preliminary searches.
A great search tool is netronline.com. You can do most counties online if its a major city. Their free unless you actually pull up the documents. Also, maybe try titlesearch.com. They do a fairly good job for like $40…
Usually if your selling off the buyer will do their own to be sure. But searching online can get you most of the information if you know how to read county records.