Recent legislation has prompted realtors and title insurance companies to make changes to deed forms.
The change will have a big impact on titles. Real Estate forms will be amended to include the printed wording that title will be conveyed subject to “statutory exceptions.”
Title companies will prepare all deeds with that exception language, and all title insurance policies will include exceptions for “statutory exceptions.” The phrase expressly excepts the lien for property taxes, AND any and all recorded documents, AND all matters that are disclosed or that would have been disclosed by an improvement survey plat or could have been ascertained by an inspection of the property and which were not created or otherwise known by the grantor.
In other words, a buyer will take title subject to all encroachments, erroneous fence lines, neighbor’s decks over the line, underground utilities, prescriptive easements (existing trails, etc.) and neither the seller nor title insurance company would have liability if this statutory exception remains in the deed form.
For more information, contact Sharp, Sherman & Engle, LLC.