Title companies suck. Trust no one and CYA!

As a homeowner, one of the most important things you must have in order to sell your home is a clean title. The title says who the property belongs to and if there are any liens against you (i.e. if you didn't make payments on your car and you used your house as collateral, or you didn't make your house payments, or in reference to a condo, you didn't pay your condo association fees). If your title isn't clean, you cannot sell your property without someone else taking their cut first. That being said, one of the steps in the selling process involves a title company doing a title search to make sure your title is clean before the sale can proceed. When they did the title search for the title on John's condo, we didn't exactly get good news which was a bit of a shock. John had made all of his condo association payments on time, every month, in full. He had not received any notifications that he was late on anything or owed anyone any money. So when the title company called our agent to inform him that the title came up with liens on it, we were a little upset.

They called on a Friday to tell us this and that they were looking into where the liens came from. That following Monday, John and I went down to the county clerk's office to get our marriage license since we were planning to get married on Friday (April 10th). Directly across the hall from the County Clerk's office was the Register of Deeds. John thought it would be a good idea to stop in and see if they could shed any light on the situation. John explained the situation to the woman at the front desk saying that he had owned the property for several years, and based on the information he has, the liens have to be old because he wasn't aware of any missed payments and hadn't been notified about them. She said she would have no problem looking up the information. All she needed was an address. John gave her the address and she asked if it was a condo building and he said "Yes, it's the Twin Towers building." Her immediate response was "Oh my god! That place is so messed up!" At this point I'm thinking "Please just let us get this thing sold so we can be rid of it!" They brought up the information on the liens. One of them was from 2003 and one of them was from 2005. John bought the place in 2007 which should have been impossible without the liens being released. They totaled to around $4,300 (which we really didn't want to fork over given that we were getting married, had just bought rings and were buying a condo). We were given a long speech about how this should never happen and John needs to go after his title company because it's illegal to sell a place if there are liens on the property. The woman was nice enough to give us a print out of their information so we took that with us.

I scanned the document we were given and sent it on to Steve who relayed it to the title company working on the sale. I waited until Wednesday to call Steve and see if there was any news. We were set to close on the 17th and it was the 8th so we didn't have a lot of business days left. We knew at this point that the liens had been place on the property by the condo association, but no one in the association had any record of them. No one had any record of any money being owed for John's unit. But no one was willing to release the liens. John called around and spoke with the property management company and the current president of the board for the condo association but because they had no record they wouldn't release the liens on his property (yeah, that sure makes a whole lot of sense). He was told that the only person who would know about them was the former president of the board but she had fallen and broken her hip and was in the hospital. What are the odds?

By the time Wednesday (April 8th), I wanted an update. I called Steve but all he could tell us was that the title company was "working on it." He had good news though - the buyer was willing to pay the liens if we couldn't get it straightened out because he really wanted to close the following Friday. Unfortunately , that didn't exactly make us feel any better because that would mean paying the condo association money that they had no record we owed. We didn't want to pay an extra $4,000 to sell the place. That just wasn't going to happen. Plus, we didn't want to be in the situation where we owed the buyer money after everything was all said and done. I got a little upset at this point and I called John to see what he though we should do. He was pretty angry as well and stressed out due to work stuff so he finally just said "I don't care what you do, just let me know what happens."

I tried calling the bank but I figured they wouldn't be willing to help me since John and I weren't married and I wasn't part of the original mortgage agreement. I was right to some extent, but I got lucky because they said that I could call their title company and talk to them since the title information was public knowledge. I called First National's title company and they told me that they didn't have any information on the sale because they didn't handle the title transition. I looked up the title company's information and tried calling all three phone numbers listed. I got messages saying that all the numbers had been disconnected (this can't be good). So, I called the title company back and told them I tried calling the title company in the mortgage documents and all their numbers had been disconnected . The lady I talked to was nice enough to find out who had taken over the files for the title company. I was told I should call First American Title.

I called First American Title and was transferred to someone named Ellen who told me that the title company who handled the sale of John's condo, LTS Title Services, had their insurance license revoked by the Nebraska Department of Insurance in April of 2008 (you have got to be f*#@&^g kidding me). She then proceeded to tell me that they probably had John's file somewhere, but she would have to go down to look through their files to find it. Because it wasn't a transaction they actually handled, they don't have the records in their electronic record keeping (great, just great). Ellen said she would call me back. In the meantime, I called my friend Mary who suggested that I contact the department of insurance to find out why the company's license was revoked. It might shed some light on things.

I called the department of insurance who were actually very helpful and told me that all complaints filed against the title company would be on their web site. Originally when I went on their site to look for the complaints, I found the last one which was what put them out of business and that was enough to freak me out. I have since gone back and found multiple complaints, all of which the company was found liable for before they finally had their license revoked by the department of insurance. The original complaint I found basically said that they were taking money on behalf of other companies and not passing the money on to the companies to which the money was owed. So, they were embezzling to the tune of over $50,000. Awesome. The other complaints I found (charging twice for services and issuing illegal coupons) pretty much followed suit with the whole "stealing money" thing. I was pretty freaked out after I read that and I was convinced that they had taken John's money for title insurance, but never actually given him any. Which, if that was the case, we were completely screwed to the tune of $4,000.

After totally freaking myself out by reading the complaints against the title company online, Ellen called back to tell me she wasn't able to find John's file and without the "Commitment to Insure" number which would have been provided along with all the underwriting information from the title company, they probably wouldn't have any luck finding it. In addition, she also said that the rest of their Nebraska files had been shipped to Independence , Missouri. At this point I was pretty upset and started crying on the phone explaining that we were supposed to get married in two days and we were supposed to close on John's place and our new place the following Friday and we really don't have an extra $4,000 lying around without going into our savings which we needed in case of emergency and John had looked through all of his files and he had everything except this commitment to insure and we would look again that evening, but he was sure he didn't have it and we just don't know what we're going to do. I felt bad for her because I really didn't mean to upset her. She sounded sort of flustered and said she'd see what she could do. We looked for the title insurance paperwork that night but of course couldn't find it. John had everything except that. He had all the good faith estimates, the warranty deed, the closing papers, a copy of all the checks, everything. I described what the paperwork should look like based on what Ellen had told me and he was certain he never received it. We were sure that we were totally screwed.

The next morning as I was getting dressed to go to work, Ellen called me. She apologized for calling so early but I figured she must have news so I was excited. She asked me which liens we were being told were still outstanding. I was really glad we had stopped at the register of deeds because I pulled up the document in my sent e-mail and read the information about the liens to her. She then told me that one of her colleagues in Missouri had found John's entire file and sent it to her. In the file, there was a letter from the condo association specifying three liens that were on the property in 2007 before John bought the place. The letter stated that the owed amounts had been paid in full and the liens would be released. Two of them were the liens that John was told he owed. I was really excited and Ellen (my new best friend) e-mailed me a copy of the letter which I forwarded to John. Right after I got off the phone, I called John (and woke him up) and said "Tell me I'm your best friend!" He was still pretty groggy and given that I called his work phone thought that I was from work and there was a problem. He woke up a little more and I told him my news. He sent the letter to the management company and Steve, our agent, and we finally had the assurance that the liens would be released and the sale could proceed. Thank the Lord!

So, moral of the story for everyone - make sure you get a commitment to insure when you close on a place because without it, you're screwed unless you find someone like Ellen. Also, I hate title companies (with the exception of First American Title). No one seemed to have any clue what was going on and I was a little cranky about having to track down all this information on my own. I still want to know what the hell the title company handling the sale in April was doing because I found out more information in one afternoon than they found over the course of three days. What a bunch of lazy wankers!