For the last week I have been in contact with non client wanting me to price surveying 6+ acres of rural property and possibly the remaining portion of a 90å±acre estate.
It took a few calls and hours for him to identify the property on Goolge Earth. After viewing the property it was clear that not all boundaries were fenced, so that meant some were by seller/buyer designed agreement.
He complimented me on my knowledge of the area and was appreciative that I had informed him of the local area and said that he definitely wanted me survey this for his purchase because I had told him more than anyone he had talked to and that he would soon be signing the contract.
I ask for a copy of the Title Commitment and Buyers Agreement so I could see what was what and I was told that I could not have a copy of that by the Realtor and Title Company.
Told the guy that without something to start from I could not help him.
Days went on and he contacted me about a price, told him I need some info to give info.
Talked with Realtor and was told that she could not get a copy of Title Commitment herself.
Title Company told me they could no longer send the surveyor or anyone else a copy of a Title Commitment or any other information on the property as they were hiding behind what their Underwriter's Attorneys were instructing them to say.
Guy calls again this morning and emailed me a 1966 deed to a few tracts totaling near 3 acres and he is buying 6+ acres and I said that surely is not all he has to send me.
He said that it was.
Guy, you need to call your finance company and ask them to send me Title Commitment and Copy of Sales Agreement and if he actually want me to do any work at all to send me a Survey Order that identifies himself, the name of everyone involved from bank to realtor to property owner, all their names, contact information and to describe what he wants me to do.
Got a text an hour ago "do nothing, found another way"
I send a reply"for the time I've spent accommodating your questions at my own expense, please inform me as to what this other way is"
His reply "they took it out of my control"
Does the buyer have no say in their own purchase?
Why can a surveyor not have a copy of a Title Commitment or other information prior to giving a price for the survey?
How can the Title Company close their door and lines of communication to Realtors and Surveyors?
Have the Financial lenders conspired with Title Agencies to pull the plug on the open market of professionals offering their services?
This has a bad smell to this whole story, gonna see what happens thru this deal and find out who does what to get this one on the clerks books.
Sumpin's stinkin' in Denmark, for sure. Somebody's in a for a sound scr**ing.
I'm not altogether sure what's going on within the Title Insurance industry, but about two or three months ago new regulations came down the pike. Gone now are the days of walking into the Title company office and visiting with the abstractors and closing agents. Relegated to memory are the days when I could walk in and go straight to the back of the building to inspect the Abstract Books. While this may have been unique to my locale, I imagine everyone here had a similar relationship with a local Title company.
Where there once was an open hallway, there is now a glass doorway with a lock that rivals anything Ft. Knox could afford to purchase. I have become a stranger in my own home town, as it were.
If the local title company wants to visit about a survey, the presiding officer will have to have that meeting at my office. I'm not "cleared" to have it there.
It sucks that you wasted the time trying to get that job, but maybe you're better off not doing it. I've started just coming up with excuses of why I can't do it or giving an astronomical ballpark price when the potential client starts getting evasive or shady. There should be no reason they can't tell you the information about the property right away or give you the title paperwork.
Yeah. I need a survey, but tell you where. Sounds like a bunch of BS to me.
My WAG is that they do not have a valid sales agreement...
I had a title co one time beg for some 30+ yr old non recorded plats. (I was supposed to do a survey) They did the closing with those old surveys! It was a "Favor" job, where one was helping the other, and "SAVING" the cost of a survey! I still think about it, when I drive by there!
🙂
Maybe the Title Company doesn't want you doing the job. I don't know about Texas, but here in Florida some title companies have their own survey company to do their jobs. I have never had this problem with such title companies, but it is a possibility.
To update the property is 1/8th mile down the road from the place buyer pointed out on Google Earth and is not 5 ac but 6.11 acres.
1. 40yrs ago this property was 1/2 mile from the KKK Breakfast and Lunch Grill
2. Realtor is very accomplished at selling a boat load of property and closing with no survey and getting some of the higest rates for her work. (She asks the owner what they must have for the property, adds in her 6% and then turns and sell the property for 30% above that total an keeps the overided)
3. A description of the property exists and was last used in 2010 for a mortgage loan by then owner of local bank (inheritance)
4. Description is ancient, Begins at NEC of this tract on EBL of a Headright Survey and had Bearings in Degrees and Minutes and distances in Varas to tenths. Latest used in mid 1960s which is around the date of the house.
5. Property selling price is 35% higher than it was appraised two years ago.
6. Buyer is probably as different as day and night from the other residents of the neighborhood.
To test the current status quo of the so called Title Company Policies that were explained to me so rudely at the beginning of the week, I send in one of my prized clients "a Queen if their ever was one in East Texas" and holder of an enormous portfolio of properties that are almost sitting around every corner with the results of a research to find ownership in a list of properties that may or may not cover and area she has agreed to take in trade with a local Church whose Worship building burned recently and happens to fall in a newly designated Flood Zone adjoining her home in return for equal amount of land atop one of the communities iron ore hilltops.
Her mission is to obtain a Commitment of Title for me to work from.
A Harris, post: 349676, member: 81 wrote:
.......
1. 40yrs ago this property was 1/2 mile from the KKK Breakfast and Lunch Grill
......
so, the property moved?
Buyer apparently can not read a map...........pointed out wrong house
#2 sounds illegal to me, but then again I am not a realtor.
We have run into this with our local title company. Their explanation, and they were very nice about it, was that the underwriters deemed certain information in the commitment confidential. The way they've gotten around it is to send us a "Title Report" which enumerates everything on Schedule B, which is, for the most part, all in the hell any of us are concerned about. It's working over here.
To be fair, we house a significant amount of a title company that the main title company purchased, in our office. The "cards" are available for our use and the files are not, without prior approval. I never need the files and they have a key to my office. So far, so good, at least in this little county in East Texas.
"...here in Florida some title companies have their own survey company to do their jobs."
I have recently run into California lenders that will only accept ALTA surveys from one survey firm. They actually tell the property owners that they MUST hire this firm. I believe that is unethical and I think it may be illegal but haven't had the time to pursue it.
I wonder if Katie and Kermit Bohrer owned that grill. They owned a clothing cleaning business when I was just a little tyke. They put up big metal signs all over the county promoting Katie Kermit Kleaners with three big bright yellow K's being the first thing you saw from about a quarter mile away.
This was the family's only business and the owner and wife were as mean as they came.
Served the best cup of coffee and glass of tea anywhere around.
The menu was simple and limited and everything very good.
Had inside sitting for a dozen or so, roof covered open area outside tables with an order window.
The area is in the middle of nowhere at a highway intersection surrounded by a shallow pool of oil where hundreds or more small rigs are sitting over a hole that will yield a few barrels per day if any takers will keep them running.
In town there was the Kosy Kitchen Kettle that was the primo eatery of fine country cooking.
The menu read like a truck crop list and meat came from the local locker.
Some orders were fetched if their doors were still open.
Many people had standing orders written down on a calendar.
