Video Transcript:
So how do you run a title search on a multi-unit building? This is Dave at TitleSearch.com. If you're looking at a multifamily apartment building and you want to get a title search done, the question comes up is, "Is it a commercial or residential property?" The answer is it depends. For lending guidelines, many lenders use four units as the cutoff. If If it's more than four units, it's a commercial property. If it's four less, it's a residential property. For the purpose of a title search, it's going to depend on the complexity of the records. We always try to run a four-unit property as a residential property, and we can even go off from there. We've been able to run 10 unit properties as a residential property. The reason that many properties can be run as residential is the ownership structure. Many properties are owned by an individual or a single member LLC. If that's the case, most can be run as a residential property with much lower rates, much lower complexity, and it doesn't trigger commercial just by it being a multifamily property. If the property is owned by an entity like a corporation or a trust, or maybe even sometimes a partnership, it may get a little more complex to run the search, but it may not have to be a full-blown commercial search. It may be some hybrid search that can get you all the information you need and still not be a full-blown commercial search. If you're looking at a residential property and it's got 5, 6, 7 units, contact us at title search dot com, and we'll see if we can run it as a residential property rather than having to go full-blown commercial.