[SkyPuncher]

The tax stuff is all public record - easily verifiable. Deaths are also generally publicly verifiable.

The rest of the stuff would essentially require intentional fraud by the seller. You’d be able to recoup most of those costs via court. Annoying for a private individual, but I tolerable as part of a portfolio.

I’ll be real, you can pretty quickly tell the type of person you’re dealing with in a home sale. The people who have a tendency to “trash their title” also show other signs of untrustworthiness during the transaction.

[Scubabear68]

“Public record”. Yes.

Now tell me how you find the public record. When much of it is not on the internet?

[SkyPuncher]

Most municipalities now have online records as part of their recording keeping system. This includes all of the tax information about a property. Might even include records of various permits.

If they’re not online, then they should have records in the municipal or county office. Might be a small fee to pull them, but they’ll have them.

If they don’t have records, then you may want title insurance.

[Scubabear68]

“Most”? Citation please.

I reality the dozens of Counties and hundreds of municipalities in just NJ are all different. Some online. Some not. Some online but with enormous time lag. Differing systems with different data. My township and a few dozen others were all coveted by a tax assessor who had an abomination of a Flash based web site that degraded to the devil’s own JavaScript when Flash not available.

Then you need to know the County system. And state system.

Then get into the courts. Court eFiling and search capabilities vary wildly.

In my town’s case you would need to do several on-site searches plus a few Internet based ones to do a proper title search.

[SkyPuncher]

> “Most”? Citation please.

Both places I've purchased from have utilized https://www.bsasoftware.com/. The municipal directory is here: https://bsaonline.com/MunicipalDirectory. In my current state 75% of municipalities are covered by BSA.

In my prior state, many counties used Ascent Land Records Suite

This site is essentially a search engine for Municipal data: https://www.countyoffice.org/

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* Alcova, Wyoming (pop 34) - Covered

* Atlantic City, New Jersey - Links out to Board of Taxation, which has this search tool: https://www.taxdatahub.com/622e0489f94ca0ce44f394e3/Atlantic

* I could go on and on.

Reality is municipalities need to manage this data. These online portals are just a side-feature of municipalities needing to manage their tax base.