Do you know what a Title Commitment is?  Do you know what a Title Commitment is for?  Do you have any clue how to read one?  Would you know what was wrong if you read it over and over?

Here is the short answer to all of these questions.  A Title Commitment is a document prepared by the Title company to advise you that you will be receiving "good title".  But what does that mean?  It means that you will get the land and buildings with no clouds on the title?  Now you understand?  Of course not.  In lay terms, it means you get the full legal title to the property which means no one else will be able to make any legal claims to the property. 

But you can buy a property that no one else is making any claims for and still be buying a property full of problems. How?  Well there are these things in "Title Land", the unique corner of the law that few people understand, where something called Schedule B Exceptions are listed. 

Ordinarily, most of these exceptions are generic matters like the utility easements that the power company or the water provider might have.  It will include things like the building setback line, a line that prohibits you from building anything past it.  

But inside these exceptions are the real dangers of purchase.  In them are the easements and notes about the property that may influence you not to buy the property.   Things like the property is in a flood zone. Or that the property has a drainage easement running underneath the house.  Or that a neighbor owns an easement that allows him to use a thirty foot swath of your property.

You can and should try to read these exceptions, but you should have a real estate attorney review the title commitment for you.  You can see and should demand that the title company provide you with a survey of each and every easement located on your property. 

How much will an attorney cost you to review the Title Commitment?