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The Expert Podcast brings you firsthand narratives from experts across diverse industries, including private investigators, general contractors and builders, insurance agencies, vehicle specialists, lawyers, and many others.
Today we're going to look at a very specific type of Open Source Intelligence, or OSINT, which is property title forensics. Property title forensics is a method of researching real estate records to obtain more than just what’s on the surface. All of us as investigators or researchers will do research in the real estate records; we’ll look at property deeds, maybe ownership records, but there's a lot of deeper information, kind of like metadata, that's contained within property records that's often overlooked.
In fact, many researchers will look just at the ownership of a property—just the name on the ownership—and not necessarily look at what's behind the scenes. Some people even just look at the tax assessor and not the deed recorder, which means they’re missing a lot of information. So, what comes from property title forensics? Well, there are invisible patterns of activity that can be discovered, and there’s also inconceivable information. Let's take a look at a couple of examples, and we’ll go back and forth between what can be found and examples of that.
Here’s an example of a deed. It happens to be from California. Now, keep in mind we pulled some random deeds from online; the deeds here and the people involved have nothing to do with any investigation—these are just random public records that were pulled up. Here's a deed that was recorded in 1989. If you notice on this deed, it talks about the normal boilerplate grant deed, trustee, grantor, and grantee, but it does have a recording stamp. If you look up here in the right-hand corner, it shows it was recorded at 8 A.M. on June 26, 1989. Well, that's important to know because you know when the deed was recorded—it may have been signed a week or two before, but it wasn't recorded until this date. You want to compare the recording date with the signature date because that might indicate whether it was delayed on purpose or by accident. Normally, a title company is going to rush right down to record it right away, so if you see a gap or delay there, that could mean something. We’ll talk about that later.
It will also give you a recording number, 89334-761, at the very top. Sometimes it's referred to as a book and page. When you see that number, the first thing you want to do is pull the recordings on either side of that. For example, you see 334761, pull 334762, 763, 764. Why? Well, if there is a batch recording by a title company, attorney, or even a private civilian, they may bring down multiple deeds at one time that have to do with different properties, and they're recorded in consecutive order. Deeds are not recorded grouped by property; they are recorded in chronological order. So, if a person brings down a bunch of deeds for properties, they're going to be recorded one after another. A lot of times, what we find is if somebody is doing asset concealment or some other type of activity, those deeds are recorded one after another, and you might be able to find it even if it has different names and addresses. It will tell you something about that subject.
The next thing you know is there’s a handwritten note in the left-hand corner: 1519205 KFP. What does that mean? Well, that's a notation written by whoever prepared this deed or the title company—in this case, First American Title. That may be their file number, a reference to another case, or even a reference to a wire transfer. You want to make a note of that and see if it shows up somewhere else and do some searching for that.
What types of information can come from title forensics? First and foremost is financial information. Obviously, what we're looking for with deeds or any type of asset search is financial information. Where does that come from? That comes from a closing statement, a settlement statement. When a deed like this has been prepared, it’s part of a settlement or closing on a property. That closing has a form called a HUD-1 or a RESPA form, which lists all the ins and outs of money—the money paid in, all the money paid out, wire transfers, mortgages, down payments, commissions, and insurance. And that settlement statement is not recorded in the land records, but it's recorded by the person listed in the return to block. Once a deed is recorded, the county will then take the recorded original and send it back to a party designated in the return to block—here, the trustee, Norman F. Starkey, trustee of Sunset Boulevard, Hollywood. That person will have more information about this closing. If it's a title company, they’ll have a settlement statement.
Now, there’s nothing that requires them to disclose the settlement statement, but there’s also technically no law that says they can’t. So one of the things you can do is contact that party to get a settlement statement. Again, here you have a book and page, 845534. You want to pull 535, 536, and also 529, 530, and so on.
What are the other things you're going to look at? Well, look down here. You have some signatures: the signature of the seller, the grantor, but you also have signatures of a notary. Almost every real estate jurisdiction requires that documents recorded in the land records be notarized. In many cases, they also need a witness signature or two. You want to look at those names. You want to find out the notary here is, it looks like, Terry Evanson. There are no witnesses on this document, but they may be on the next page. You want to note those and the date it was notarized because you want to make sure that the person actually notarized it. You want to look and see if they notarized other things for this subject. If you see the same notary on a document from 1986, and then also see the same person notarizing a property sale in 2005, it’s not somebody who was just sitting around at the title office; it's someone who works for or is associated with that person. You want to verify who their identity is and also make sure the notary stamp is valid—make sure the date of expiration is before or after the date of notarization.
Here’s another good example: notice this one. This one was signed on October 18, 1986. It wasn’t recorded until November 25th—more than a month later. It was recorded late. Why did it take that long to get recorded? You also have some checkboxes here. Notice there are checkmarks next to each of the important things: APN number, the return to block. Those are usually done by the office that recorded this to make sure all the important details are correct.
Let’s look at another one. Here’s a warranty deed. Notice again the checkmarks. This is from a different county altogether, and they checked all the important things on the document to make sure they're there. You have some handwritten notes here, which could be a file number. It’s from Franklin Mills Title, who holds the closing statement and all the financial information. You have the signature of the recorder and the signatures of the grantee or grantor, a parcel number, and a mailing address. Notice that the mailing address is handwritten. You want to look at that address to see where it traces back to.
Here’s another one with a bunch of signatures. You have witnesses, a notary, and dates. In this one, you also have an example of a legal description of the property. You want to look at that legal description to see if it references other properties. Sometimes there are batch deeds recorded, and there are blanket mortgages on more than one property.
Alright, here are a couple of other types of intelligence that can be gleaned from doing title forensics. We talked about relationship slip-ups. This is where witnesses sign, and those witnesses aren’t really part of the transaction, but who are these people? If they're witnesses that came with the person signing the document, they may be colleagues, co-workers, or relationship partners. You want to look at those people and search them to see what their relationship is. You also want to look at mortgage patterns to see if a person is buying and selling properties. Is their mortgage balance going up or down? Are they taking out bigger or smaller mortgages? That can indicate a flow of funds. Are they putting more money into properties and hiding assets that way? Or are they taking money out by doing cash-out refinances or equity lines? In that case, where did that money go?
You also want to look at liens and judgments. Are there other claims against the person? For example, in many cases, if there's a judgment against a party due to a lawsuit, it gets filed in the land records in the same county recorder’s office. So now you can find someone who has an adversary relationship with your subject. If somebody sued Joe Schmoe, they may have some records about him, like IRS liens, child support, sales tax collections, or government liens—even if they’ve been paid or the judgment has been satisfied. It's still going to be in the land records. Who is the plaintiff in the lien? Are they a contract partner gone bad? Are they a relationship partner? A former spouse could be helpful because they’ll have joint tax returns that may assist in your investigation.
Does the subject own additional properties? Here's why: If you see that a subject has other properties that they've owned—even if they've since been sold—who did they sell them to? Was it a fraudulent conveyance? Do they still control the property? Was it a quitclaim deed with a ten-dollar set consideration? Who’s paying the taxes on that property? Are they still paying the taxes? Who’s the insurance underwriter? You want to make sure you're eliminating or investigating every property because the subject might own more than one property and still control a property under somebody else’s name.
All of that can be done through title forensics.