Build your team – a title company

05 Dec Build your team – a title company

This week I am talking about the importance of building a good team to help you reach your financial goals. I already mentioned the importance of adding a lawyer to your roster, so let me go into a little bit of detail about title companies.

Title companies perform several important functions for real estate deals, and while it isn’t always necessary to work with a title company, you should at least know which ones in the area can help you if the need arises.

Let me elaborate.

When flipping land, you can generally perform a basic title check yourself and can carry out a search in a legal database to ensure that there are no outstanding liens against the property. But when you flip houses or work with purchase options, deals tend to get a little more complicated and using a title company can help the process to go much more smoothly.

For example, a title company can perform an official title search to satisfy all the parties involved, can clear up any clouds on the title, and can hold money in escrow and distribute payments to all the parties in the deal according to the written agreement.

To find out which title company you should use, start by simply searching for “TITLE COMPANY” and then the name of area you are investing in. Then do a little legwork and call each one, asking if they can do double closings, how much their services cost, and how much time they need to process each deal. This last question is especially important because we often find ourselves racing against the clock to finish a deal before an auction and we don’t want the county to sell a house before we can buy it.

A title company is also useful if you are investing in an area for the first time. They will file the correct paperwork with the county for you and will generally send you a copy of the documents. These copies are gold, because they let you know exactly what forms are used to transfer property ownership from one person to the next, and in the future you can simply edit and modify the documents yourself, saving the cost of the title company.

Title companies should form a part of your team and can make your investing just a little bit easier.