Real estate agent Sander Scott explains why buyers should request a marked title commitment from sellers. It ensures mortgages are properly discharged before closing. Scott shares a personal example from a Cass Street sale where this protection mattered.
Hey there, this message is for buyers. If you're in the process of buying a home and you're getting close to closing, you're going to want to ask the title agency or title company for what's called a marked title commitment. So you can do that, or you can have your agent do it, whatever. Um, but what that does is provide you some protection if the seller has a mortgage and the seller's mortgage company, when they get paid off, because when you buy the house, the mortgage company always gets paid, or the bank. But sometimes that bank neglects, or that mortgage company neglects to discharge the mortgage, which basically erases the lien hold that they had on the property. As a buyer, you don't want to have any liens on your property that you didn't have anything to do with. So it could cause you some trouble into the future. And it's really easy if you ask the title company for this marked title commitment. Then the title company is responsible at that point. If something comes up in the future, the title company will dig in and go to work for you and get that mortgage discharged. So this actually happened to the buyers of one of our properties. We didn't realize that we sold a house on Cass Street, Shannon and me, And then we were getting ready to buy another place and they asked, "Well, what about the mortgage you still hold on the Cass Street property in Traverse City?" And we said, "We sold that. We paid off the mortgage." But that mortgage company had yet to discharge the mortgage. And so that could have caused— didn't really cause us any issues 'cause we had sold the place, but it could have cost the new buyers some headache at some point. Turns out that it didn't, but this is an example of what I'm talking about. So ask for that marked title commitment from the title company. That way, if there's any confusion or issues later on, because banks sell to banks, you know, like there's a Northwestern Bank sold to somebody, and then basically it's Huntington Bank, and Huntington Bank saying, we're not going back in time for something that we didn't have anything to do with. It's a merger, 3 mergers ago or something, you know. So keep it simple, ask for a mark title commitment. You know, this is one strategy Among many other things that, you know, that I kind of— services that I provide that kind of, I think, set me apart from other agents. I'm making sure that my buyers are getting these kinds of things. So there you go. Talk to you soon. Thanks a lot. If you have any questions, give me a shout.
