The Expert Podcast

…So is it possible to determine if there is a lien on a piece of real estate on a property And the answer is yes. property records. real estate records are considered public records open to the public. They're open records, unlike motor vehicle records or some other types of documentation. real estate records are open and you can access those at the county level. There are 3,611 counties in the country And every county has a recording system for real estate documents things like liens mortgages deeds, quitclaim deeds, and if a piece of real estate. Has a lien against it. That. document needs to be filed at the county recorder's office And there are several ways to search this. First of all you can run a commercial title search There are many companies that run title searches. And can determine if there's a lien on it, you can actually access the records of that county yourself Now don't make the mistake of trying to do an online Google search don't type in property lien 12 main street in Google because you will get some results and they might even. Look like they have records There's some companies that might charge you a fee to tell you if there's a lien, but those are not the official real estate records You may find yourself paying five or 10 dollars To some online you know document companies xyz.com. And not know if there's a lien on the piece of real estate. The only 100% accurate way to determine a lien is to go in person. To the county recorder's office in the county where the property is not where you are but where the property is and you're going to run. A document search and index search for that property and there's instructions on how to do that in other videos. But the reason you want to go in person, even if your county has something that's online. That looks like it allows you to do searches online. Don't use the online system. In fact if you look at the bottom of that website it'll tell you these are not the official records for real estate There may be errors There may be omissions. And so if you're searching for a lien on real estate presumably. The reason you want to know the answer to that question is because it's something important to you. Right It's something that, has a need for you to know and we're not talking about, you know lien on a lawnmower. Real estate is an expensive decision Whether you're buying it lending on it. You want to know if there's a lien and spending the time whether it's a half an hour or an hour to go down to the courthouse to find out for sure in person is probably worth it. If it's not worth spending that much time to do or spending, you know a couple hundred dollars for a title search, then I don't try to take a shortcut and use some other method of doing it Don't use an online search Don't use some third party. You know…Real estate records.com whatever it is And again I'm not, I don't know anything about that website I'm just saying in general a generic website. That you click and it pops up on your screen. Anything that pops up on your screen instantly is not going to be a hundred percent accurate the only way you want to get a title search is if somebody. goes to the courthouse in person, pulls paper documents from books, reads them to determine a lien and gives you a title report, whether you do it or somebody else does it, anything that's online that's instant has the likelihood that it's not going to be a hundred percent accurate So you could determine if there's a lien. You know liens have to be recorded. There are some liens that are not directly recorded against the property They might rerecord it against the person. And if they own a property sometimes it automatically attaches For example, if somebody has a tax lien against them from the IRS, if they own property in that county. Even though there's not a lien directly recorded against 12 main street. If it's recorded against Joe Smith. And he owns 12 main street. You may find that there's a constructive lien against that property So be aware of how liens attached to properties. And again we're not attorneys we're not giving you legal advice. If you do need more legal determination. You know get, legal opinions from a qualified attorney. But if you want more information about how liens are searched or how to determine on a property you can check out various resources online. The most important thing is…a lien on real estate. is an important thing to know about And there's many kinds. There's construction liens. There are taxliens. there are HOA liens and in fact, a mortgage is a form of a lien It's a voluntary lien When you get a mortgage on a property. You are voluntarily letting the bank put a lien on your property. Because they're lending you money. So a mortgage is a form of a lien liens come in many forms child support liens, bail bond liens, make sure you're getting all of them So you don't miss a hidden lien that could result in you making a bad decision on a piece of real estate.