Video Transcript:
So why is a legal description important to review as part of a title search? This is Dave at AFX Title, Certified Title Abstractors. When you're looking at a title search or looking at the documents which go into a title search, the legal description is critically important to verify on those documents and on the search itself. What you may find is on a document such as a mortgage or a deed or a lien, the legal description is relegated to a back page, usually addendum one or attachment one, sometimes called Exhibit A; where the long written out legal description, sometimes two or three paragraphs of text, is put on a back page and just referred to within the underlying document. The reason why that happens is because a legal description is so complex that mixing it into the or the deed would make the writing too complicated. But that legal description is what critically identifies the property with all of the activities and events that are referenced in the deed, the transfer, the financing, the lien, the mortgage, all reference a particular property. Now, that legal description might just appear to be something you can overlook and just figure that it identifies the property you're looking at. But if a property has been subdivided at some point through the history of that chain of title, the legal description will change. So if the legal for the original deed is different from, let's say, where a lien falls, that lien or easement may only be for part of the property. At the same time, it It's very common for a title company or an attorney or a lender who's preparing a new document just to refer back and make a photocopy of that old legal description. Well, if there was some error or typo on that legal description, it's going to carry through on future documents. And there's been many chain of title research projects we've looked at that this error has existed for a decade or so. And if you go back farther and find an older deed, it has the correct legal. And it may be something as simple as switching Northwest corner to Northeast corner, but that will change entirely which property is being referenced. So a good certified title examiner will take a close look at the legal description on all the documents they come across because each document will reference that legal in a different way and make sure they're all the same and make sure that it's consistent from one event to another. If you do have questions about running a title search on real estate, you can reach us at our website at title search dot com.