Title Company

A title company is a neutral firm that searches a property's ownership history, issues title insurance, holds escrow funds, and conducts the closing.

A title company is the neutral firm at the center of a real estate closing. Before closing, it searches the public records to build the property's chain of title — every past deed, mortgage, lien, and judgment — and flags anything that clouds ownership. It issues title insurance protecting the buyer and lender against problems the search missed, holds the escrow funds, prepares the settlement statement, and runs the closing itself: collecting signatures, disbursing money, and recording the new deed. In some states, a closing attorney handles this work instead of a title company.

For wholesalers, the title company is not an interchangeable vendor. Not every office will close an assignment of contract, and fewer still will run a double closing, so experienced wholesalers find an investor-friendly title company before they need one and send every deal to the same closer. Timing matters just as much: opening title the day the contract is signed means a lien or a missing heir surfaces with weeks left to fix it, instead of days.

What beginners get wrong: waiting until they have a buyer to open title, then discovering a problem with two weeks left on the contract. Ask any title office two questions up front — do you close assignments, and can you handle a double closing if the deal needs one? If the answer is a confused pause, keep calling. And check whether your state closes through attorneys, because that changes who you need on your team.