Do i need to pull title report before I buy at auction?

Question

I just realized Philly sheriff sales are fully online now, which makes the process a lot easier. That said, I’m trying to focus only on properties with fairly clean mortgage and ownership history. For those actively buying here, do you order full title on every potential deal, or do you use some lighter pre-screening process first? Any free or low-cost online tools you’d recommend before spending money on full title work?

Alan Asriants · Answer

You should always do a quick title search for any property you want to buy. Sheriff sales, mortgage foreclosure sales, tax sales, etc do not always convey a clear and marketable title. Mortgage foreclosure sales ensure that the first lien of that mortgage is removed but there might be second or third postions liens that are not guaranteed to be removed. Buying a property before running title at sheriff sale is an easy way to get smoked.

Chris Seveney · Answer

do you no, should you - yes. we buy non performing loans and in the past we have had some second position liens that buyers would overpay and then realize there was a first and lose a very big deposit. We had one property in florida that went 5x to auction, we collected like $50k in monies due to other people bidding not realizing we were foreclosing from 2nd position and they were still responsible for the first.

Chase Busick · Answer

Most sheriff sales will require you to go through title company anyway. When you go to the confirmation of sale, the county should give you a clean title for ownership.