Buying real estate in Dallas, Texas, is identical to the Wild West, but that does not mean buyers should shoot from the hip.
The Dallas real estate market is booming, and supply is unable to keep up with demand. The average amount of days Dallas real estate is on the market is one of the shortest in the United States. This is not favorable to buyers. Buyers are being required to accept more and more risk because one way to combat the short amount of days Dallas real estate is on the market is to formulate prompt, trouble-free offers that puts cash in the seller’s hands.
But “buyers beware” when formulating your offers. There are absolute minimums that buyers should verify about the property. One of those minimums is title to the property.
Buyers should verify that the seller holds title to the property when formulating their offer. But because buyers will have issues with verifying the title to property before they make an offer, they should make their offer “subject to my lawyer’s approval.” In Texas, a seller can only sell what s/he has title to. Because of this, it is imperative that the buyer verify that the seller has title to the entire property.
Buyers can accomplish this without the assistance of an attorney, but likely not quick enough to meet Dallas’s real estate market constraints. Verifying the seller has title to the entire property requires more than a brief pursuit of the names on the deed to the property recorded in the real property records. It requires looking through the chain of title in the real property records, and it also requires looking through the district court records.
An experienced real estate attorney knows where and what to look for when looking through the chain of title and district court records. For instance, to verify the seller’s title, it is necessary to look at the chain of title in the real property records, which requires analysis of the sequence of historical transfer of title to the property. An experienced real estate attorney knows that this requires looking at every deed in the real property records, and also knows that not every part of a deed is of consequence.
Additionally, it is necessary to look through the district court records to determine if the property has ever been subject to foreclosure, a probate proceeding, or divorce proceeding. An experienced real estate attorney will know whether a foreclosure was proper, the impacts of probating and not probating a decedent’s estate, and also the interaction of a community property and divorce.
Buyers are eager in Dallas’s Wild West real estate market, but they should avoid shooting from the hip by not verifying that the seller of the property holds title to the entire property. It is not impossible for a buyer to accomplish this, but it would be unrealistic in Dallas’s real estate market to expect a buyer to accomplish this within a short period of time while balancing life, work, and family. To remedy the gap, buyers can accomplish a quick purchase with piece of mind by making their offer “subject to my lawyer’s approval.”
If you’re considering making a cash offer on a property, the Harris Firm can help verify the seller’s title. Please feel free to contact the firm if we might be of assistance.
