This episode chronicles a messy title situation on a roughly 30 acre East Texas property straddling two counties, requiring separate title examiners and a $3,500 survey commitment before receiving title commitment. The primary title break stems from a 1922 marriage certificate creating uncertainty about name changes and potential heirs, forcing work with three different title companies over 2 to 3 months, with the third being First Option Title specializing in complex Texas title issues, while facing uncertain closing probability despite strong deal economics showing easy 2x return on the $115,000 purchase.
Key Takeaways:
- Never Commit Survey Funds Before Title Commitment on Estate Sales The $3,500 survey expense occurred without title clearance on a property with airship indicators, creating sunk cost risk that new policy will eliminate.
- 100 Year Title Breaks Exist But Rarely Kill Deals A marriage certificate from 1922 requiring heir verification represents extreme title complexity, though engaged sellers with documentation can often resolve even century old issues.
- Multi County Properties Double Title Complexity Properties straddling county lines require separate title examiners who don’t coordinate, automatically increasing time, cost, and error probability compared to single county deals.
Listen to the full episode for the complete decision making framework on balancing survey timing, seller engagement, and title risk in time sensitive transactions.
(Podcast transcript below)
Hi, Chris Duff over at Serious Land Capital, Vacant Land Funding Partner. Wanted to comment on a deal we’ve been working on for at least a couple months, maybe close to three here. Pretty unique deal. It’s roughly a 30-ish acre piece in East Texas that
Interestingly, actually straddled two different counties. So, you know, part of the acreage, when you looked at a parcel line perspective was actually in one county, the other piece was in the other. So, you know, a survey was needed to be curative as far as figuring out, where are the true boundaries related to this property?
but there were also several, flags from title that came up here and it has turned into a bit of a messy title situation. I wanted to comment more from a procedural standpoint, because when we got this deal, you know, the, pricing looked really solid, site visit had a
really qualified broker. This is going to be a roughly 115k buy.
relatively easily be a solid double, even conservatively. So we felt like, we’re in a solid position here. The title company that was working with us indicated, hey, yeah, we’re gonna need a survey in order to close on this. However, we did not have a title commitment prior to having to get that done. So…
You know, what’s often the case is within our industry is anybody who’s operating land for a bit is, um, uh, you know, speed to close isn’t always critical for a lot of sellers, but, know, it is a selling point for many of them. So, you know, when we’re indicating, or, you know, we have like an upcoming closing date and, you know, sub 30 days generally, um, especially for like, you know,
below 200K price properties. That’s going to be fairly routine. And we might not necessarily get a look at the deal until the purchase agreement had already been signed prior so we might even have less time. some sellers are going to be more willing to extend than others. And surveys in many parts of the country, in many counties.
especially more rural areas can oftentimes be weeks in advance to get done, not always, oftentimes. then you kind of have to weigh the option of, we don’t have everything lined up to close this deal yet. Like title hasn’t been cleared, but we know that getting a survey is required in order for the title company to move forward.
Plus we want to show the seller that we’re moving forward earnestly with the intent to close the deal. And a number of these survey companies will either require payment upfront or before the final work is delivered. So we were put in a position here where we thought, okay, we’re in a solid position.
Let’s spend the $3,500, you know, not cheap, but not a crazy amount for getting a survey done, especially north of 30 acres, even when we don’t have 100 % clearance from Tidal. And based on our initial review, it…
didn’t seem like there were going to be key issues. had a very engaged seller. It did appear to be an estate sale, but owned by a sole owner, like the person on the county records was the person we were dealing with. So it seemed like we had insight, okay, that this guy’s a sole lawyer. He has control on this property.
But unfortunately, over the last couple months, is that this title situation has just blown up to where it seems the main holdup is…
One of the counties, again, this property is split across two counties, they’re both super rural. one of them was, or they both have separate chains of title that needed to be cleared by separate title examiners that don’t work together. So there’s different individuals involved with clearing title on each side. So was already complicated from that side. And one of the counties indicated that
there appeared to be a break in title primarily from like a 1922 marriage certificate and they weren’t sure whether there was a particular name that was changed, you know, 100 years ago at this point and that could implicate other heirs. Yeah, I know by the letter of the law, like, you know, title companies, they’re…
they’re doing their job right to figure out, is there, I mean, it’s a CYA situation. And also, you know, for future owners too, like, is there a possible title dispute that even from a possible shift in title from a hundred years ago where there’s like, you know, next to 0 % chance that…
anyone would come out of the woodwork that hadn’t arrived already in relation to the property. It was so far out there. I hadn’t seen a case that went 100 years back as far as needing this marriage certificate to get cleared up. But again, the seller has been very engaged and apparently even had these documents. It’s pretty remarkable. I haven’t been involved as much in the day-to-day or
really diving deep into the docs. have more of a overview on what is going on. The land investor who was working with us on this is very deep in the weeds, working with the seller. So that’s been very helpful from that side. But it seems like we have additional documentation to clear this up. And the first title company, they had an incorrect title suit that they claimed was
part of why they thought it was unsurable, that turned out to be a mistake. And then they also indicated, they needed a death certificate that wasn’t able to be found from the mom of the seller, but he had that, so that cleared up. So really, it all came down to that issue related to that 100-plus year possible break in title, that this first title company was not willing to insure.
or their underwriter was not willing to do it. So we went to a second title company and they were supposed to be more investor friendly and they were just, and I got kind of the sense of laziness from the first title company and they made a mistake. The second title company just said, hey, yeah, we, know, this is, you know, the abstractor who works in this one county just isn’t available to do it. Sorry. We’re not able to do anything with this file. Like to me, that just kind of reeks of laziness.
And some title companies are very, very solid, some not. Definitely on the opposite side. So especially in rural areas, a lot of people working for title companies, not the most highly paid individuals. To me, it’s usually a little bit more of a commodity, dime a dozen from title companies that hold particular loyalty for many of them. I know it’s different.
wholesaling houses or just the SFR in general, some land folks, but not as often. And then we finally went to First Option Title, who like Logan Fullmer’s group routinely uses in Texas that go very deep. So we’ve been working with them for weeks and it’s been okay. Going back and forth, again, I know they’re busy. This isn’t like a massive moneymaker deal for them, but we just got additional emails back and forth.
They’ve been pushing on our behalf, which I appreciate. yeah, looks like there is this trying to establish a chain of title is kind of the main thing that we think we’re going to be able to solve based on the paperwork the seller has provided. He’s very engaged trying to get this sold. The work the title companies been doing, the land investor working with us seems to…
Okay, let’s solve this. seems like there is a route to get this done. Nevertheless, with this much back and forth where this is our third title company we’ve worked with, one who really specializes in messy title deals, if they aren’t able to figure this out, we are kind of SOL. Maybe Seller could hire a real estate attorney, try to figure quite title on his end.
I don’t know, that might be possible. But the issue is, like we’re staring down the barrel of, we committed 3,500 bucks for the survey and it’s unclear if we’re gonna be able to close. I’d say it’s like slightly less than a coin flip at the moment to get this done. And so, just future looking, just chatting with my partners and I mentioned all the earlier.
you issues of where you have to move with speed. Sometimes you don’t have perfect information. Sometimes you’re just going to have some costs and things don’t work out. Nevertheless, I’m going to, you know, in effectively any situation where there might be some type of airship or state sale type of seller situation, if we do not have a title commitment, back yet and
were expected to get some items done that the title company might need or possible end buyers might need like per test and so forth. I’m just not going to commit funds until we get that title commitment just to be extra safe so we don’t get stuck in some cost position that we may be in for this one. It doesn’t happen routinely, very rare. In fact, if we have to eat the 3500, like it’s…
It’s not great, but it’s definitely not the end of the world either for our business. you know, again, land’s a risky game. Deals can fall apart sometimes. So I just wanted to share that as far as how we were weighing the options and why we committed in the first place, the current situation, how tricky it’s gotten and our future orientation towards decision making. So hopefully this is helpful.
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