A title search is a professional review of public land records that confirms who legally owns a piece of real estate and reveals any debts, restrictions, or competing claims attached to it. Buyers, lenders, and title insurance companies order one before closing because problems buried in the records can cost tens of thousands of dollars to untangle after the deed changes hands. The search traces every transfer, lien, and recorded agreement back decades to make sure the seller actually has the authority to hand over clean ownership.
What a Title Search Looks For
The examiner is hunting for anything in the public record that could weaken or complicate your ownership. That falls into a few broad categories.
The Chain of Title
The search starts by tracing the chain of title, which is the chronological sequence of transfers from one owner to the next stretching back decades. Every link has to hold up. If a prior deed was never properly signed, if an estate transferred property without going through probate, or if a gap appears where no recorded instrument explains how ownership moved from one party to the next, the chain is broken. A broken chain does not automatically mean the current owner lacks rights, but it creates doubt that has to be resolved before closing.
Mortgages and Other Financial Liens
Recorded mortgages that were never formally released are one of the most common problems. A prior owner may have paid off a loan years ago, but if the lender never recorded a satisfaction or release, the mortgage still appears as an open claim against the property.
Mechanic’s liens are another frequent find. These are statutory claims filed by contractors, subcontractors, or material suppliers who performed work on the property but were never paid. The lien attaches to the real estate itself rather than to the person who hired the contractor, and a properly filed mechanic’s lien takes priority over liens recorded afterward.1Legal Information Institute. Mechanic’s Lien
Federal tax liens get special attention because they outrank most other claims. When someone owes federal taxes and fails to pay after the IRS demands payment, a lien automatically attaches to everything that person owns, real estate included.2Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 6321 – Lien for Taxes State and local tax liens work similarly and can eventually force a sale if left unpaid.
Judgment liens round out the financial picture. When a court enters a money judgment against someone, that judgment typically becomes a lien against any real property the debtor owns in the county where the judgment is recorded. Even if the underlying lawsuit had nothing to do with the property, the lien follows the land until it is paid or expires.
Easements and Restrictive Covenants
Not every recorded claim involves money. Easements grant third parties specific rights to use the land: a utility company’s right to run power lines across the back of the lot, a neighbor’s right to use a shared driveway, a municipality’s right to access a drainage channel. These do not prevent a sale, but they limit what the new owner can do with certain portions of the property.
Restrictive covenants are private agreements, often recorded by a developer, that control how the land can be used. They might cap the height of structures, prohibit commercial activity, or require approval from a homeowners’ association before building. A buyer who closes without knowing about these restrictions can invest in plans that turn out to be prohibited.
What a Title Search Will Not Catch
The search only covers what appears in the public records. Plenty of problems exist off the record, and this is where buyers get burned if they rely on the search alone.
Unrecorded easements will not show up, no matter how thorough the examiner is. Neither will a forged deed somewhere in the chain of ownership, an undisclosed heir with a potential claim, or a prior owner who was legally incompetent when they signed a transfer.
Physical encroachments are another blind spot. A title search can tell you that your lot is 100 feet wide according to the deed, but it cannot tell you that a neighbor’s fence sits three feet inside your boundary line. That kind of problem only surfaces through a land survey, which compares what the deed says to what actually exists on the ground. Title insurance policies routinely include an exception for “any state of facts an accurate survey might show,” meaning the insurer will not cover boundary problems unless you get a survey and the insurer agrees to drop that exception.
This is precisely why title insurance sits alongside the search. The search catches recorded problems. The policy covers losses from hidden defects no search could have found.
What You Need to Order One
Before anyone opens a record book or searches a database, a few identifiers are needed to make sure the search targets the right parcel. The most important are the current owner’s full legal name as it appears on the deed, the property’s legal description, and the assessor’s parcel number, which is a unique numeric code assigned by local taxing authorities to identify each lot.3Legal Information Institute. Assessor’s Parcel Number
The legal description is the formal boundary language that appears on the deed, often using metes and bounds (distances and compass directions) or a reference to a recorded plat map. This is not the street address. Two properties on the same road can share similar addresses but have completely different legal descriptions, and getting this wrong means researching the history of the wrong piece of land.
These identifiers are typically found on the most recent property tax bill or the existing deed. With them in hand, the searcher can locate the correct files in the county recorder’s office or registrar of deeds, whether those records live in a digital database or physical ledger books organized by year and volume.
How the Search Is Done and How Long It Takes
The examiner works through the grantor and grantee indexes maintained by the county recorder’s office. These indexes list every recorded instrument by the name of the person transferring an interest (the grantor) and the person receiving it (the grantee).4Legal Information Institute. Grantor-Grantee Index The examiner traces the property backward through time, confirming that each seller in the chain actually received title from a legitimate predecessor. Many states have marketable title acts that set the required lookback period, typically between 30 and 40 years, after which older encumbrances are considered extinguished.
After tracing the ownership chain, the examiner reverses direction and checks whether any owner granted interests to third parties that were never cleared, such as an unreleased mortgage or an easement that might still be active. Every name in the chain is also cross-referenced against civil court dockets and general lien indexes to catch judgments or other obligations attached to previous owners.
The findings are compiled into an abstract of title, a written summary of every recorded instrument that affects ownership.5Legal Information Institute. Abstract of Title In many transactions, the title company instead issues a preliminary report or title commitment, which summarizes the current state of ownership and lists specific requirements (like paying off an existing mortgage) that must be satisfied before the company will issue a title insurance policy.
For a straightforward residential property, the search typically takes three to five business days. Older homes with long ownership histories, rural properties with less-digitized records, or parcels that have changed hands many times can push the timeline to seven to ten business days or longer.
Who Performs the Search and What It Costs
In most transactions, a title company or title agent handles the search as part of the closing process. Some states require a licensed attorney to review or certify the results. Independent title abstractors, who do nothing but search records, also perform searches, particularly in areas where title companies contract the work out.
A professional residential title search generally runs between $75 and $500, depending on the property’s location, the complexity of its ownership history, and local market rates. That fee covers the search itself and the preparation of the abstract or preliminary report. It does not include title insurance premiums, which are a separate and usually larger expense.
Doing your own title search is technically possible in most jurisdictions because county records are public. The risks of missing something are substantial, though. Errors in public records, forged documents, unknown liens from a prior owner’s debts, undisclosed heirs, and illegal deeds executed by someone without legal authority are all problems that experienced examiners are trained to spot. An amateur who overlooks a single unsatisfied mortgage can end up personally responsible for resolving it after closing.
Fixing Problems the Search Turns Up
When the search finds a defect, the fix depends on what it is. Many issues are minor and can be cleared without going to court.
- A misspelled name, a wrong legal description, or a missing middle initial can often be fixed with a corrective deed or a scrivener’s affidavit, which is a sworn statement explaining the error. These are recorded in the same office as the original deed and become part of the permanent record.
- An unpaid lien is cleared by paying the debt and recording a formal release from the creditor. If a mortgage was paid off years ago but the lender never filed a release, the title company will typically contact the lender to obtain one.
- When a former spouse, ex-business partner, or distant relative has a potential claim, a quitclaim deed, where that person formally gives up any interest, is often the fastest fix.
Serious disputes require a quiet title action, a lawsuit asking a court to declare who actually owns the property. This comes up when there is a break in the chain of title, a boundary dispute that cannot be resolved privately, competing claims from heirs, or a cloud on title that no simple document can clear. The petitioner files a complaint, serves notice on anyone who might have a claim, and presents evidence at a hearing. If nobody contests it, the court enters a default judgment declaring the petitioner the rightful owner, and that judgment gets recorded in the county records.
Uncontested quiet title actions typically cost $1,500 to $5,000 and take a few months to resolve. When someone fights back, costs can climb above $10,000 and the case can stretch past a year depending on how complex the competing claims are.
Why Title Insurance Comes With It
The title search identifies known problems. Title insurance protects against the unknown ones, defects that existed at the time of purchase but did not show up in the search. There are two separate policies and they protect different people.
A lender’s policy protects the mortgage lender’s investment for the life of the loan. Most lenders require one as a condition of financing, and the borrower typically pays for it. The coverage amount equals the loan balance and decreases as the borrower pays down the mortgage. Once the loan is paid off, the policy ends.6Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. What Is Owner’s Title Insurance?
An owner’s policy protects the buyer’s equity and ownership rights. It is optional, but skipping it means absorbing the full financial risk if a hidden defect surfaces later: a forged deed somewhere in the chain, an undisclosed heir, a recording error that invalidates the transfer. An owner’s policy stays in effect as long as the owner or their heirs hold an interest in the property, even after the mortgage is paid off. If you refinance, the lender’s policy needs to be reissued for the new loan, but the original owner’s policy carries over without any additional purchase.
Both policies are paid as a one-time premium at closing. The premium varies by state and property value, but the cost is modest relative to the protection, especially considering that a single undetected title defect can cost far more to litigate than the policy itself.