Situation is, routine survey of a large shopping center turned into a fiasco when the title company used a grossly incorrect legal description and I couldn??t get anyone to believe me. The note got their attention and the title report was corrected overnight.
To (wonderful client):
There are two possibilities:
(A) I have gone completely mad, lost all my marbles, and need to announce my immediate retirement.
(B) I'm really okay, but this is part of a vast conspiracy to make me think I've gone completely mad.
The attached aerial has a heavy black outline of an odd-shaped parcel. That is the site described in the title report. It excludes the East third of the shopping center, excludes a square in the middle of the parking lot, and includes the hotel on the West side.
Please advise.
Bruce
Response from wonderful client:
1 is impossible and inconceivable so I??ll take number 2 or a third option which is this title report hasn??t had any attention paid to it in 35 years and needs your eagle eyes to get it straightened up. The family sold off the hotel many many years ago so maybe they are missing that history. Not sure what is happening on that parking lot carve out. Let??s let title take over on getting it corrected?
Fantastic.?ÿ Someone who needed to hear.........heard.
A majority of surveyors, in my experience, will take the title report they get and generate an ALTA from it no matter what the absurdities. Then either charge extras to redo the map, or bitch about doing endless edits without budget.?ÿ The idea that you can work with the title company and get the report's shortcomings fixed is foreign to them.?ÿ So... while the level of service we get from title companies is not what we wish for it is a two way street.?ÿ
First step in an ALTA is to read the Report. I rarely get one that I can't find something that needs attention by the T.C. Frequently nothing more than some punctuation to clean up, sometimes more. And I usually get the T.C. to update the report or at least explain why they won't.?ÿ ?ÿ ?ÿ
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My favorite is a description of the following form:
Lot 1, EXCEPT the easterly 100 feet. TOGETHER WITH the easterly 100 feet of Lot 1. ?ÿ
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i've had a couple of these in the past two weeks- like the title examiners took a left turn somewhere early on in their work and never came back.
one was similar, where the legal applied to a tract indeed owned by the same entity, but out of a wholly different patent.?ÿ worst part was the 40+ exceptions that attached to the wrong parcel.
second one had to do with two offsite easements that title treated as exceptions when they, in fact, needed to be insurable estates appurtenant to the fee tract.?ÿ?ÿ
in both cases, i'm guessing 75% of the firms around here would have just plowed through without raising any red flags for anyone.?ÿ right now i'm waiting on revised commitments for both jobs...
@jitterboogie we haven??t decided if the east 100 feet committed suicide or died trying to escape.
Surveyors often have a sense of humor that invents things like the naming of an alternate coordinate system "WR-RWE".?ÿ I often wonder if other professionals in industries adjacent to ours don't just have a sense of humor with a really long sense of time....