This is primarily for North Carolina surveyors. I had an attorney that I have never dealt with before ask me yesterday for a title insurance report in addition to my survey plat that I had sent her. Does anybody else still furnish these? I use to furnish these years ago, but I thought they had been phased out since nobody in my area has asked for one in years.
What is a title insurance report? Is it different than a simple title report, or a title commitment?
If this attorney is representing the buyer, why would they be asking you for the title report? It would seem to me that the attorney should be the one who orders the report and gives you a copy. I have personally never ordered a title report, I make that the client's responsibility to provide it for me.
If this attorney is representing the buyer, why would they be asking you for the title report? It would seem to me that the attorney should be the one who orders the report and gives you a copy. I have personally never ordered a title report, I make that the client’s responsibility to provide it for me.
Yeah, the owner should be the one giving the report to everybody.
I don't mind ordering them myself though because a quarter of the time if I let the client do it they send me something worthless like a parcel inquiry (title companies around here must do those for free or something).
No.
Another issue is that, if the report is in the client's name, it is not mine to share with anybody since it includes personal information.
While i'm not a NC surveyor, we get title reports on almost everything. We are currently waiting on over 50 reports for one project and 80+more on another. It's the only way we can determine the true owner and any easements on the properties. Plus, they are dirt cheap. Well worth the $300!
I'm a little confused on how you are waiting on multiple title reports for a single job. If the title search is done correctly, you should get one report for each job that could range from a few pages to hundreds of pages. I've had to work with some title reports that were up to 300 pages, but, everything was all in a single report.
Our projects are very large, 50-100 parcels and typically involve pipeline installation, roadway expansion and right of way or easement acquisition. Each parcel has a report.
Yeah, even when I order multiple reports at the same time they usually spam me with a separate report for each parcel.
Well worth the $300!
I haven't seen them that cheap in the Boise area for probably 5 or 6 years. They're $500 now but sometimes you can get $100 knocked off if you order multiples and they're all adjoiners.
Calling the above-mentioned form a Title Insurance Report is misleading. It's a surveyor's report made for the use of the title insuror and/or other parties.
Most of the language in the form is taken directly from the HUD Surveyor's Report, which has been around for 50 years or so.
The HUD form used to ask the surveyor to state whether the site had been used as a solid waste dump or landfill. That question has been omitted here. Quite possibly most surveyors refused to answer it for liability reasons. I always did.
There was also a question on the HUD form about flood hazards, which isn't included in this form. But everything else is much the same.
It never does any harm to qualify the answers in some way. One handy phrase on questions relating to underground items is "No surface indications disclosed by survey."
I live and work in NC and have never been asked to produce one. I seriously doubt the attorney typically receives these from other North Carolina surveyors.
If you've already produced an ALTA survey for her I wouldn't sweat it as you're already on the hook. Otherwise, I'd request additional payment for extending your liability to Statewide Title. If she bocks at that (she will and she'll say she's never had a surveyor take issue with it), simply ask for a note of indemnification for you and your E&O insurer.
This is why I have to have a page of assumptions and limitations in any contract for even a simple ALTA. At the eleventh hour, here comes the request to add another lender, or owner to my ALTA cert. Then, I refer them back to my contract where it states that the addition of more than one each, lender, owner, title company, will require a fee amounting to 10% of the total cost of the survey. Then I have to explain it to my client and listen to him tell me that the attorneys have never had a problem with this from other land surveyors. Please don't roll over for insurers or their attorneys. If the parties you're certifying to are of no consequence, then why do you need to certify to them?
I can't tell you how many times I have argued against adding attorneys and others to certifications on ALTA certifications when they have no financial interest in the properties being bought and sold, other than collecting their fees for doing next to nothing. I won't back down on that, mast of the ALTA surveys that I do are for multimillion dollar deals.
