From luxury villas to fixer-up apartments, and for realtors, investors or property lawyers, a property title search is your first step into identifying the ownership and understanding the financial status of any property across the States.

When it comes to buying a property, especially one with a lengthy history, the property title provides a record of ownership, financial claims on the property and any tricky ownership issues that previous owners have resolved or created. 

A title search is a dive into the public records that provides all that information for your general interest or to invest or buying decision on a property. This is an essential task for any mortgage application, giving you key insights into:

• Whether the property has freehold or leasehold status

• The physical boundaries of the property

• Potential environmental or developmental risks

• What the property is used (and supposed to be used for)

• Information on the ownership, and chain of ownership 

• The property’s legal status and any covenants, access rights or easements on the building.

Note, if you want to find out more information on the owner of a property, this article can help. A title search will be done by the mortgage company, but from time to time can come up with different information, depending on the source, to yours, creating extra steps or hurdles to completing. 

Knowing the right property title information upfront can speed up the process and reduce costs.

In simple terms, all you need to know is the physical address of the property, but sometimes that can extend in plot or lot numbers, especially if you are looking to buy a property that spans multiple subdivisions. 

With that information to hand, you can enter the details into a property title search engine. There are many of these, and they typically access the same public record resources to provide the key information. Note that some brand new properties might not have their data recorded, and there may be gaps, especially through recent natural disasters, rebuilding and rezoning works.

For really old properties, there could be many generations of owners, and it is a rare but still possible occurrence that someone else could have an inheritance claim or other issue in respect of the property, all of which can be uncovered by an in-depth investigation through a property title search.

Note that the title deed is a different document, one that contains the combined and latest information on the ownership of a property and is the legal record of proof. Property owners typically can claim these once any loans, liens and other debts on the property are paid off.

With your title search data to hand, you can check the accuracy of it against other records or information from your realtor. Checking key details like the dates of transfer, name of seller, and outstanding debts or liens against the property. 

The earlier you do this, it can help speed up the process with your realtor and mortgage company, or at the very least allow you to compare notes and ensure their data is correct and any defects to the property title are resolved. 

If there are any outstanding issues, it is up to the current owners or seller to resolve them before you take over the property. Some can be resolved simply with a payment, others can drag into legal disputes that take years, and many potential owners will walk away from these before the issues become too complex or costly.

If there’s little in the way of information from your online title search (and free online search tools are limited in what they can provide), search local government record offices, tax records and so on. Looking into the past owners, you can build up a chain of ownership and identify issues. If you’re not familiar with the process or lack the time, professional records search agents can do this for you. 

Beyond the title search, other issues that buyers will want to look out are:

• “Unauthorized works” that don’t appear on any documentation but have changed the property or building, which is why a thorough inspection and survey are required. 

• Special taxes, aka Surtax charges, that the local municipality might have levied against properties. 

• Public improvement assessments, something charged to improve your local area, that are not related to the property title, but might crop up at other times.

All things being equal, most title searches provide the basics you need to complete on a property, but they can prevent you from wading into a legal minefield or lengthy buying process.