It took about a month to piece everything together but looking back over the entire effort, the entire episode could have been avoided by a more careful abstractor.

Got a call that one of our insured consumers couldn't get a home equity because of an unsatisfied mortgage.

I'm gonna leave out a bunch of details to keep this short but here's the core abstracting issue. In 2004, I purchased a full search - 60 years - at $150 from a qualified abstractor who reported one unsatisfied mortgage against our property.

Turns out that the day this mortgage was recorded, there were TWO mortgage recorded with the same lender for two different properties owned by the same party and located on the same street. Our abstractor did not pull both documents and look at them. The legal descriptions had inadvertently been recorded with the wrong mortgage - they were switched. The abstractor reported the mortgage that contained our legal description but failed to note that the address on the first page did not match and also did not note the other mortgage which DID have our address on the first page. IF our abstractor had more carefully reviewed these documents, the situation could have been corrected in 2004.

So, now a property report is order by a bank using the SAME abstractor. [This county - which shall remain nameless - doesn't have much choice in abstractors.] Again, the abstractor reports the mortgage as unsatisfied and STILL does not notice the incorrect address on the first page. The abstractor also does not notice a court order recorded referencing this mortgage which reformed the legal description so that it WAS NOT against our property.

It took us a month of detective work to figure all of this out while our poor consumer had to put their project on hold.




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