Title Search & Examination
Before anyone can insure a title, someone has to read it. Examination is reconstructing the chain of ownership from the public record and finding whatever is still attached to it.
What we look for
A search is not a database lookup. It is a person reading documents and reconciling them against each other:
- The chain of ownership, deed by deed, and every break in it
- Deeds of trust and existing loans, including ones that were paid but never released
- Judgment liens, tax liens, and mechanics liens
- Easements and rights of way, recorded and prescriptive
- CC&Rs and use restrictions that survive a sale
- Estates, trusts and probate matters that were never completed
- Name variations, vesting errors, and legal descriptions that do not match the parcel
The title commitment
The commitment is the written result: who holds title today, the legal description, and everything of record attached to the property.
Read it. Ask about anything you do not recognise. It is the list of what has to be cleared before closing, and it arrives at the point where a problem is still cheap to solve.
What San Juan County adds
Title here is not the same work it is elsewhere, and the differences are not incidental:
- Severed mineral estates. Surface and minerals were separated on a great deal of this ground decades ago. Most buyers here are not acquiring what is underneath, and they should be told that plainly rather than discovering it later.
- Oil and gas leases, pipeline easements and rights of way that run with the land and do not expire quietly
- Water rights, which are separate property in New Mexico and do not follow the deed on their own — irrigated acreage also carries ditch assessments
- Trust and allotted land near the Navajo Nation, where conveyance requires federal approval and the ordinary process does not apply
- Access that crosses federal or state trust land and needs a recorded grant rather than thirty years of habit
Finding it is not the work
Resolving it is. A requirement without a plan attached is just bad news.
When examination turns something up, you get what we found, what it will take to clear, who has to act, and how long it should take. Then we start working it.
Open escrow
Send the contract and we will open the file the same business day.
Other services
- Title InsuranceProtects the ownership you just paid for against the parts of its history no one can see.
- Escrow & SettlementHolds the funds and the documents until every condition has been met, and not one day sooner.
- RefinanceKeeps a short, lender-driven timeline from slipping — and confirms the old lien actually goes away.
- Commercial & InvestmentHandles the added diligence — entities, surveys, endorsements, exchanges — without adding delay.