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It also could be that some sort of court action was started but the attorney was too incompetent, disinterested or whatever to keep on top of it. But perhaps once it was started, the clock stopped ticking.
Fraudulent conveyance may come back on the title company. Who knows?
All of this is pure speculation as I get most of my legal advice from shows like Reckless and Judge Judy.
The O.P. writes: "My parents owned multiple homes about two decades ago."
Unbelievably, no one has asked, so I guess it's up to me:
I assume your parents lived in one of those houses, thus providing them shelter. So why did they own multiple houses? What was the idea there?
Most likely they were rental properties, and were sold/swindled from his parents by the property managers. Many immigrants to the US invest in real estate because they don't know about investments/stocks in this country and real estate is as good as gold in most other countries. It is only in the US where government regulations have made life hell for landlords and other long term owners of real estate.
Definitely pursue this. A defect in title never clears. There is no statute of limitations on that. The title insurance company should reimburse your parents.
Most counties have a real estate lookup system through gis. You can start by getting the addresses of the properties and then search the ownership history. Could be that your parents were never on the title?!
Definitely pursue this. A defect in title never clears. There is no statute of limitations on that. The title insurance company should reimburse your parents.
Thank you. I was wondering when someone was going to bring up the title company in all this. Seems they are the ones liable.
Definitely pursue this. A defect in title never clears. There is no statute of limitations on that. The title insurance company should reimburse your parents.
Exactly...
Another possibility is the transfer was done legally as far as process... maybe even through the court system if the parties claimed your parents had abandoned and were no longer paying the taxes...
I would start at the title company or lawyer that was used when your parents bought the property... they have already been paid for a service and go forward from there.
You could also spend an afternoon at the county recorders office and copy all the documents on file for each parcel... you would only be out your time and nominal copy fees.
Good Luck and are your parents still in the picture because unless you have legal standing... I'm not sure what you can accomplish...
It would be interesting to know the last time your parents paid property taxes because not paying property taxes is a sure way to lose title.
Did you look up the history of the deeds at the registry of deeds? Its possible the city took it and sold it at auction. In which case you would have no claim to the property and hiring a lawyer would be useless.
Do a little research yourself before claiming it was definitely stolen. You should already know what happened before talking to a lawyer.
My parents have copies of notarized deeds on hand, but I haven’t looked into (or identified) the “history” of deeds at the registry (didn’t know one even exists!). Keep in mind that I'm very new to real estate and its terms but I’m getting around it day by day. I’m only days into “investigating” things so it hasn’t gone very far. I’m waiting for real estate and legal documents to come in from my grandparents to see where the case was left off and plan to go from there. When these documents come in, I’ll likely chart out events then have an attorney look at them…perhaps even pay the old attorney a visit.
To answer some of the questions posed in one post:
According to my parents, the homes were sold by a total of five individuals (all worked together). Three of them were “close” friends with our family (just to put things into perspective). One individual was the same realtor/broker that originally handled the sale when my parents bought all the homes.
The fact that one is/was a realtor/broker (and even worse, the original realtor/broker), my mind tells me that he 1) knew what he was doing and 2) knew that he could easily take advantage of my parents based on his previous business with them. The documents were forged; the individuals posed as my parents under one name/entity.
All the homes were being rented out while my parents were out of the country. The rent was to be collected by the above realtor; when realtor failed to get in contact, my parents flew back and he was nowhere to be found (later found out that he – and at least the three others – fled the country).
Overall, some of you give us hope that something can still be done. Will be definitely be pursuing this even if it will cost a few hundred dollars only to get an unfortunate answer…at least we’ll be able to put things to rest!
With an address of the property or a Tax Map Key number, you might be able to go online and download the appropriate documents that will show the history of the ownership of the land. If it were around here, I'd be able to give you the URL to the local Bureau of Conveyances who file all land documents.
Buying and selling land and houses is much different than anything else.
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