What a title search looks for
and what happens when it finds something.
A title search reviews public records to confirm the seller can actually convey the property. On the New Jersey state form the buyer orders it, and what it turns up starts a clock on the seller.
- A title search is a review of public records confirming the seller really owns the property and can sell it
- It turns up liens, judgments and other claims that have to be cleared before closing
- On the state form the buyer orders the search and the seller gets 30 calendar days to clear what surfaces
Explainer. Written by The JK Realty Group.
A title search is a review of the public record for the property you are buying. It confirms the seller owns what they are selling and has the right to convey it, and it looks for anything attached to the property that would follow it to you: unpaid liens, judgments against a previous owner, an old mortgage never formally released, an easement nobody mentioned. None of that is about the condition of the house, which is what the inspection is for. It is about the ownership.
On the standard New Jersey form the buyer orders the search. When something surfaces, the seller generally gets 30 calendar days to clear it, and a buyer who ends up voiding over an uncleared problem can recover what the search, the survey and the mortgage application cost them. That is the printed shape of it; what your own contract says is the thing that governs, and it is worth confirming with your attorney rather than assuming.
Say the search on a Camden County home turns up a contractor's lien from work done years ago and never released. The seller has a defined window to get it satisfied and the release recorded. Most of these are administrative rather than dramatic, and they get cleared. What they consume is time, which is why the search is worth ordering early rather than in the last fortnight before a closing that people have already booked movers around.
Title insurance is the related idea buyers often blur into this one. The search looks backward for what is on the record. The policy covers you for what the search missed. They work together, and neither substitutes for the other.
What to ask, and who answers it: your attorney is the one who reads the title work, tells you what an exception on it means for you, and handles clearing. Your lender will require its own policy and can tell you what that costs. Your agent can tell you how a title issue affects a timeline and what it means for the closing date you have been planning around.
Our take
A title problem is somebody else's paperwork attached to the house you are buying, and it takes time to unwind. If you are heading toward a closing date, ordering the search early is what keeps a surprise from becoming a delay.
Heading toward a closing date? Let's talk.
The example is illustrative. What your own contract provides governs, and reading title work is a question for your attorney. General information, not advice about any specific property. The JK Realty Group, brokered with OMNI Real Estate Professionals. Equal Housing Opportunity. See our Terms of Use for how we source and credit these posts.
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