3 Potential Title Issues To Watch Out For When Buying A Home
If you are thinking about buying a home, you might have heard about using a real estate title service before doing so. However, you might not understand the true value of using one of these companies. Basically, a title service helps by checking the title of the home and ensuring that there are no issues that you should know about. These are a few of the potential problems that you might run into -- and that you should look out for -- when buying a home.
1. Missing Heirs
In some cases, people pass their homes down to family members when they pass away. If the person who is supposed to get the home as a part of a will is not aware of it, however, someone else could attempt to sell the home. If you purchase the house, this could cause you problems later on down the line, since the person could "show up" and want property of the home. A real estate title service will look for this issue to help ensure that no one will pop up out of the woodwork later and try to gain ownership of the home.
2. Construction Lien
If a contractor does work on a home and the work is not paid for, in some cases, the contractor can put a lien against the home. Basically, this means that the home is not supposed to be sold until the lien is paid, or if the home is sold, some of the proceeds are supposed to go to the contractor. If this type of issue is not caught during the buying process, however, you could end up on the hook for the contractor's costs, and you could even lose the home if you don't pay. Since you probably do not want to be on the hook for construction work that you did not have done yourself, it's smart to have a real estate title search company look for these types of problems.
3. Second Mortgage
In some cases, people are able to take out second mortgages and other loans while using their equity as collateral. If you do not find out about this type of loan in the process, you might end up being the one who has to pay back the loan. This is why it's essential to check for this type of problem before buying a home.
As you can see, using a real estate title service such as TitleSmart is essential to avoid certain problems when buying a home. In fact, these are just three of many issues that a title service can look for before you purchase a piece of property.
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