Video Transcript:
How long does it take to get a title search for real estate? This is Dave at Title Search dot com. If you're looking to have a title search performed on real estate, the way the process works is a certified title examiner will visit four different records locations for that property. They're going to go to the tax assessor's office and pull documents there. They're going to go over to the civil court records and pull documents there. They're going to go to the Clerk Recorder of Deeds and pull mortgages, liens, judgments, assignments; maybe a plat map. And they'll go to the probate court office and pull records there. Each one of those locations typically takes one and a half to two hours at each location. We normally allocate on average about 8 to 10 hours, man hours, worth of search time per property. Typically that's over one to two business days depending upon what time the order comes in, whether the records rooms are open, and whether there are any complexities at the records office. For example, usually when you go to a records room, you can tell them that you want a certain document number: page 182 in Book 41. And they can hand it to you on the spot or they can point you to the book. In some cases, especially if a document is older, you may have to wait for that document to be pulled from the archives. And they might tell you, wait a couple of hours and we'll give it to you or we'll call you in a few hours and we'll let you know when it's ready. Sometimes it might be the next day. When those come up, that will put a delay in the search, although we can go and search some of the other locations in the meantime. It also depends upon if these four locations are close together. If the tax assessor, the recorder of deeds, probate, and civil court are all in the same building, that makes it easy. If it's a larger city where you may have to drive down the block or across town -sometimes in a different city -that may add some time to it as well. To answer the question: On average, it's about 7 to 10 man-hours that happen to over 1 to 2 business days. But if the search is very complex, it may take a little longer. In some cases, it may take an hour or two. If you need a search very quickly, we can sometimes put 2 or 3 or or three or four people running each part of that at the same time and get you back a search within an hour or so if needed. If you have questions about running a title search on real estate, you can reach us at our website at TitleSearch.com.