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PLSO Issue 5 2015 September October

9 Professional Land Surveyors of Oregon | www.plso.org have an exhaustive listing of all the possible encumbrances on the individual parcels. Are you starting to get the picture? There are numerous opportunities for errors when receiving a title report from a title plant that has been prepared by some unknown employee. There is no way you can know their qualifications, schooling, nationality (yep, there I said it, because cultural differences and a thorough grasp of the importance of every nuance of the English language do make a difference in how a person sees the world from a real property point of view) or experience. If you were to ask me why I don’t think chaining title can be outsourced, go through a condemnation proceeding and see how quickly some savvy states attorney will shred you for relying on unproven researchers to undergird your decisions on the resolution of a complicated, contested boundary that is being crossed by this route survey. A survey that may have strong opposition from the ranks of the rural communities it affects (does the word “fracking” come to mind?). Okay, drawing from personal experience, here’s a list of possible errors: • The title officer did a less than adequate job of preparing the abstract, e.g. typographical errors, key omissions, poetic license. As you know, this isn’t the exclusive provenance of title companies. How many times have you received correspondence from a member of the bar that is a clear admission that they are practicing outside their area of expertise? • There are omitted encumbrances in the Schedule “B.” Some may have limited or no effect on the considered transaction, but then again…(see the case citation at the end of this article!) • When the title chain is critically important to arriving at some understanding of how a particularly confounding ambiguity arose through the conveyancing trail, an incomplete record can be, not just frustrating but a fatal flaw. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve been faced with having to explain to an escrow officer (or whatever a title company uses for the title of a person who may be doing the chaining for you) what a title chain is and why it is critically important that they discover every document in the conveyancing record, without gaps. From my “old school” perspective, it’s awfully frustrating to have to explain this process to someone else when you know exactly what you need and where to get it, assuming you have the luxury of time to do so. • Erroneous citations of recorded instruments within the Schedule “B.” Sorting out these obvious “deadends” can not only be time consuming, but frustratingly annoying. It’s probably important to note here that the person/ persons interested in the Schedule “B” may have differing needs regarding its contents and in defense of title companies, they are in the business of anticipating all the needs of those who may be interested. • The time it takes to get all/any of the above resolved and produce a “revised” title report. Think about this in terms of timelines. From personal experience, the title report comes through my client via someone in the real property division. They log it into the document trail, review it for sufficiency, assign a tracking number to it, then send it on. It arrives at my desk through several intermediaries, most likely months after it has been received. I review it, discover some critical errors that need revision and then return it, only to begin the whole cycle again. If you were preparing an ALTA survey for a commercial real estate transaction, do you think any of the parties involved would understand a process like this, let alone not chafe under it? It is not my intention to throw brickbats at the title insurance field, only to point out a major opportunity within our profession to perform outreach. There may be numerous answers regarding how this can be done, only that the need is there. This discussion within the land surveying profession has been heard many times. Numerous articles have been published within our profession regarding the question of our relevancy. I hear the term dinosaurs batted around and that we’ve lost sight of that relevancy. We’re now faced with GIS folks, general contractors and other manipulators of geospatial data taking measurement away from us, using tools that produce results without the need to understand them. Google would be happy to do that as well! You know what? I don’t care. In my macroeconomic theory class back when I was in college, they used the oftenheard Latin term, “caveat emptor!” Let the buyer beware! Our role here is to educate people about the importance of what we do in terms of our subject matter expertise. It seems there is a tremendous opportunity (and need?) to get in front of title companies, real estate professionals, attorneys and yes, even the public, and talk about what it is within the conveyancing world that is important to us and how much better the system could be if more of our professional expertise were used to influence it. Complaints about this arena have been heard since I began in this profession. We need to work toward resolving a situation that I consider to be completely unwarranted. What prompted me to write this article? I received a copy of an appellate court decision out of Multnomah County, filed June 11, 2014, Jeffrey Kraft and Angela Schmiede, plaintiffsappellants, vs. Estate of John Ronald Cooper, Sr.; et al, defendants, and Chicago Title Insurance Company of » continues on page 10


PLSO Issue 5 2015 September October
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