The two words no Maine real estate agent, broker wants to hear uttered from a lawyers lips, “title problems”.
But that pair of words can just mean garden variety issues. Not always major flaws on the title to the Maine real estate property listing. Does not mean automatically the Maine land title is junk, worthless, unfixable.
Those serious issues that rack up lots of billable hours.The trotting up and down courthouse steps to clear the title flaw. To remove the tail burdocks. To meet with a judge to straighten out land title issues. Round up heirs, work through wrinkles on the lines with neighborhoodd feuds raging fully. Hopefully.
Often what happened was a property tax lien was placed on record at the local registry of deeds in the county where the property is located.
For lack of tax payment during a lean year. And those back taxes were brought back up to speed, made current the following year. But no one went back into the registry of deeds to record a tax lien release from the muncipality that put the hex on the title. Had placed the lien after eighteen months of being behind on the tax bill for the property.
So the tax lien removal process is the easiest of title problems unless three years has gone by and the town has taken the real estate back. Acquired it for back taxes that were not paid on time and kept current. But there are other title issues that creep up in the sale of a property listing in Maine.
Knowing anything that hurts the value, affects the sale of a property listing in Maine should be known coming out of the gate. If the seller, owner of the real estate levels with you and explains here’s a problem that exists with the property. Or past history of fights with the neighbor over water rights, an easement to use a roadway or just plain disagreement over where the property line lies. Here’s a list of local area Maine attorneys, lawyers, title abstractors.
The boundary line, the one that is fuzzy, vague and that neither side knows for sure.
But are both sharing the same feeling that somehow each is going to lose ground if a formal expensive survey is performed on the property. To figure out where those lines actually lie that both have in common.
Often when a class D survey, a down and dirty hit and run inspection shows more indepth study is needed, the issue is the corner of the garage is over the line.
Or I have seen cases of the roof edge of the garage is encroaching, hangs over the dividing line between property owners.
How to fix without firing up a chain saw to cut it off, trim it up. Or jacking up the structure and giving it a tug back in the direction of the property listing I am trying to sell.
And that suddenly has a wrinkle in the sale needing straightening out.
We share the same well for water but nothing was ever put in writing.
Everyone years ago from one big happy family. Caring and sharing. But now what do we do when the mortgage holder of the new loan for the home says no dice. We want one well for the property we are making a loan on so work out a disconnect or other arrangement. And the neighbor does not have the money to drill a well nor does the town has a public line wandering by that could be tapped into for an H2O solution.
Sometimes the issue is the big property in Maine was carved up, sliced and diced into many smaller parcels.
Slow land parcels drawn up, conveyed out and the acreage reduced in size. Like slicing cheese. Nibbled away at 
before the days of formal property land subdivisions and reduced to what it is today. After the smoke settles.
And the smaller out parcels of property, Maine land were not clearly defined is what today’s attorney has to bring up for everyone involved in the Maine real estate sale to be aware of. The agent, broker sneaks a peek at the registry. The lawyer goes further when a buyer is located, before the closing happens.
To hear about the problem affecting the metes and bounds of where it is located, what we have to work with is what the lawyer points out after careful title search review .
When the property description deed was drawn up by hand, on a kitchen table or out in the barn yard of a Maine farm. It can be loose as a goose. Referring to the corner being that big oak or elm tree. A big rock or the tree line that are both long gone, wiped out and missing for a reference point on the treasure map scrutiny. And although everyone tried hard to do a good job on drafting the deed to the land being conveyed, the results might have been less than desirable. Because of not being trained for such matters.
Like an Maine land attorney or surveyor with schooling, experience, the right skills for the job.
And the home grown property deed just made a muddy cloud of what the original intent was years ago. After the players one by one die off, leave this blue and green Earth. Are not around to tighten up and clarify title boundary issues.
Title problems where all the heirs have not signed off and it’s a Nancy Drew or Hardy Boy mystery to try and find out where they went. And publishing in the weekend newspaper in all that fine print you see but don’t read.
That makes an attempt to find the heirs that have been long dead, missing. To quiet the title, to clean up loose ends so a title insurance company would touch it, cover the risk of what if someone lays claim to the property.
Thinks they still have an interest in the title to the Maine real estate.
Until the Maine land lawyer lifts the hoods and pokes around the title to the property over the last forty years or further back, it is always a roll the dice before the closing to know if everything is squeaky clean for certain.
Dealing with the issues that come up and hoping not to hear “we have title problems” goes hand in hand with hoping to avoid another two words being shared. That the property listing being bank financing has a “low appraisal”.
Oh oh. The figure of value for the property listing not being able to do a successful full chin up to get up and over. Clear the hurdles needed to get a bank financing the Maine real estate to say the three magic words. That we are “clear to close”. Appraisal hunky dory. So is the title to the Maine property listing, the real estate in Vacationland that someone is about to be the new owner of and enjoy.
I’m Maine REALTOR Andrew Mooers, ME Broker
207.532.6573 | info@mooersrealty.com | MOOERS REALTY 69 North St Houlton ME 04730
