A few years ago, Sandra and I were headed to the beach when we had a flat tire on the interstate. It was late at night, and the flat was on the driver’s side. Cars were zooming by at 70 or 75 miles an hour, just a few feet away.

I know how to change a tire. I’ve changed plenty over the years. But not that night. Mama didn’t raise a fool. You need the right person on the job when the risk is high.

So I called AAA, the expert tire changers, familiar with late-night interstate breakdowns.

Why It Matters Who Trained Your Title Examiner

Real estate title work is similar to my side-of-the-road flat tire experience. It matters who you call to do the work.

And here’s the question that matters most:

Who trained the person doing it?

Not all title examiners are trained the same.

Forty years ago, I was trained to search titles by an attorney whose sole practice was real estate. He taught me more than just how to track down a chain of title and use the grantor and grantee index books. He gave me a legal understanding of deeds, how to spot a problem, how to read and manually plot legal descriptions, and how to understand the legal effect of what I was seeing.

Later, I was mentored by another real estate attorney who arguably handled more real estate transactions than anyone else in the county. Working under attorneys like that shaped the way I examine titles to this day.

Because title searches are not just procedural. They are legal in nature.

Some examiners are trained by real estate attorneys. Others are trained by paralegals. Both can produce competent title abstractors if the training is sound.

Others learned from family or friends — people who were never trained by an attorney. The knowledge gets passed down, but so does whatever was missing from it.

And some title abstractors were never formally trained at all. They learned by watching, by doing, by picking up habits from whoever was in the office before them. No one ever taught them how to spot the kind of problems that don’t announce themselves.

Over time, training can become a copy of a copy. And just like title defects, blind spots can be passed down, too.

That difference shows up in the title work. Sometimes it’s a blind spot — something an examiner was never trained to look for. Sometimes it’s an inherited error — something copied forward because nobody caught it.

Both are dangerous. Neither is obvious. And both require the kind of training that teaches you to slow down and question what others trust.

Real Examples of Title Defects Missed in the Chain

I’ve seen the first kind.

I once examined the title for a refinance where the owner had already borrowed $100,000 against the property years earlier. A title search had already been done. A loan had already closed.

But when I traced the title back, I found that the owner’s mother — who had deeded him the property — was only one of four heirs. She never had a full interest in the property.

The title defect had already been missed once. It could have easily been missed again.

In another title search, a deed was supposed to convey a wife’s interest in the property to her husband. But the couple had acquired the property in two separate deeds — one for the house lot and another later for an easement tract.

When the divorce lawyer prepared the deed, the brief description at the top referenced the lot and subdivision, making it appear at first glance that the entire property was being conveyed.

But title work isn’t done by glancing at the top of a deed.

It’s done by reading all four corners.

And in the granting clause — where the operative legal description actually controls — only the easement tract was conveyed.

Now, the husband was trying to sell the property, and he had quite a problem.

Maybe a volatile one.

The ex-wife still owned an interest in the lot where the house sat.

I’ve also searched a church property in which the deed included a reversionary clause — language stating the property would revert back to the grantor if it ever stopped being used for church purposes.

It wasn’t hidden. It was right there in the deed.

But it doesn’t look like a problem to someone who doesn’t understand what that language means. Someone who is simply checking names and following the chain won’t realize that the phrases “so long as” and “but if” can turn a potential real estate closing on its head.

I’ve seen the second kind too.

I’ve seen attorneys draft deeds using the wrong subdivision map book and page. Mistakes happen. But then that same wrong reference is repeated in the next conveyance.

A simple look at the subdivision maps would have revealed the issue. But instead, the mistake was copied forward. Which means the second examiner trusted what the first one got wrong.

I recently examined a deed where the last six calls in the legal description — running with the road — had been reversed. Plotted out, it wouldn’t close.

Yet, that same legal description had been used in the previous three deeds in the chain of title. Each deed copied the one before it.

A copy of a copy.

Why didn’t someone along the way plot out the description?

What a Good Title Exam Requires

A title examination is more than searching names and pulling deeds. It’s understanding ownership, recognizing patterns, questioning assumptions, and knowing when something doesn’t fit.

Because sometimes the most expensive mistakes in a chain of title aren’t the new ones. They’re the old ones — the ones that have been copied, trusted, and repeated for years.

And sometimes the same can be said about training.

So if you’re ordering the search, here’s the question I’d leave you with:

Not just who’s doing the work.

But who taught them how to do it?

Image by fatema nur from Pixabay

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