Dee Dee
Elite Member
- Joined
- Jan 16, 2002
- Professional Status
- Certified Residential Appraiser
- State
- Colorado
Pamela,
Ask the homeowners for a copy of their Title Commitment. I believe that it is standard procedure to require an Improvement Location Certificate, which is basically a survey that shows the location of the house on the property and any easements to the property. If that condition has been met in the Title Commitment, then the title company should have a copy on file. I suspect that this will show that either the title company has insured a property with no easement if they were negligent in noticing this in the survey, or someone commited fraud by giving them a bogus survey.
I believe that most title companies require the survey (Improvement Location Certificate) to be no more than a year or two old from the time of the purchase, so if they have a very old survey (before the split) this could represent negligence on their part. Check to see what their policies were as far as age of the survey BEFORE you have them pull the file, just in case they decide to cover up their negligence. This may be a start in finding out who might be held liable.
What do county records show as far as wether or not the house has an indivual well or septic? Though it does sound as if there was some payola here, I'd check to see if the appraiser had simply assumed that county was correct and that shared well and septic was not disclosed in public records. Maybe I'm off base here, but if the county zoning shows the home as single family residential, wouldn't it be MANDATORY that it should be allowed it's own well and septic? The county may have goofed up in their recording.
As someone had suggested earlier, I'd also take a good look at the MLS description that the realtor provided to the general public. Was the lack of well or septic disclosed?
Instead of this being a case of major fraud commited by several parties, I'd consider the possiblity that it may be a huge comedy of errors and negligence starting with the county.
Ask the homeowners for a copy of their Title Commitment. I believe that it is standard procedure to require an Improvement Location Certificate, which is basically a survey that shows the location of the house on the property and any easements to the property. If that condition has been met in the Title Commitment, then the title company should have a copy on file. I suspect that this will show that either the title company has insured a property with no easement if they were negligent in noticing this in the survey, or someone commited fraud by giving them a bogus survey.
I believe that most title companies require the survey (Improvement Location Certificate) to be no more than a year or two old from the time of the purchase, so if they have a very old survey (before the split) this could represent negligence on their part. Check to see what their policies were as far as age of the survey BEFORE you have them pull the file, just in case they decide to cover up their negligence. This may be a start in finding out who might be held liable.
What do county records show as far as wether or not the house has an indivual well or septic? Though it does sound as if there was some payola here, I'd check to see if the appraiser had simply assumed that county was correct and that shared well and septic was not disclosed in public records. Maybe I'm off base here, but if the county zoning shows the home as single family residential, wouldn't it be MANDATORY that it should be allowed it's own well and septic? The county may have goofed up in their recording.
As someone had suggested earlier, I'd also take a good look at the MLS description that the realtor provided to the general public. Was the lack of well or septic disclosed?
Instead of this being a case of major fraud commited by several parties, I'd consider the possiblity that it may be a huge comedy of errors and negligence starting with the county.