When is a Title Search Done When Buying a House

A title search is done after the purchase contract becomes effective and well before closing. The order goes out within the first three days, the examination itself runs 3 to 7 business days in Florida, and the finished title commitment is due to the buyer at least 15 days before the closing date. A second, narrower search happens again right before the deed is recorded. This article walks the full sequence: what starts the clock, what happens inside those days, what the examination looks at, how far back it reaches, and what lands on your desk when it is finished.

When Is a Title Search Done When Buying a House?

A title search is done between the signing of the purchase contract and the closing, not before an offer and not after the deed transfers. The work begins in the first days of the contract period and the results are delivered near the end of it.

Those two moments sit weeks apart, which is why the question produces so many different answers. The search is ordered early so the file has room to absorb whatever it finds. The commitment is delivered late because the contract sets a delivery deadline rather than a start date.

The examination is also not a single event. There is the original search, which covers the property's full recorded history, and there is a second search immediately before recording that covers only the gap between the first search and the closing. Both are part of the same title search process, and buyers usually only hear about the first one.

What Triggers the Title Search to Start?

The title search starts when the executed purchase contract reaches the closing agent. Nothing happens before that document arrives, because the contract supplies the legal description, the parties, the closing date, and the authority to open the file.

The closing date is the piece that matters most. Every deadline in the transaction counts backward from it, so the agent cannot schedule the examination, the municipal lien search, or the association request until that date exists in writing.

Three things typically move at once in those first days. The escrow deposit goes into the trust account. The file opens with the underwriter. The examination is assigned. A buyer who wants the fastest possible start can order title the same day the contract is signed rather than waiting for the agent to be looped in by someone else, and that single decision routinely saves three to five days.

How Soon Before Closing Is a Title Search Done?

The title search results are delivered at least 15 days before closing in a standard Florida purchase. The Florida Realtors and Florida Bar contract calls this the Title Evidence Deadline, and it drops to 5 days before the Closing Date when the accelerated title paragraph is selected.

The search itself runs far earlier than that deadline. Fifteen days before closing is when the finished product has to be in the buyer's hands, not when the examiner opens the file. On a 30-day contract, the work happens in weeks one and two and the commitment lands at the start of week three.

Here is the sequence laid against a typical 30-day Florida purchase contract.

StageTiming From the Contract Effective DateWho Performs ItSourceContract executed, escrow deposit receivedDay 0 to day 3Buyer, closing agentFAR/BAR contractTitle order placed and file openedDay 1 to day 3Closing agentFlorida title practiceRecords examination performed3 to 7 business days after the orderTitle examinerFlorida title practiceMunicipal lien search orderedDay 1 to day 5, returns in 3 to 10 business daysClosing agent, municipalityFlorida title practiceAssociation estoppel certificate requestedDay 1 to day 5, due within 10 business daysClosing agent, associationFla. Stat. 718.116(8)Title commitment delivered to the buyerAt least 15 days before closing, or 5 if acceleratedClosing agentFAR/BAR contract, Paragraph 9Buyer examination and written objection window5 days after receipt of the commitmentBuyerFAR/BAR contract, Standard ASeller cure period, if a defect is raisedUp to 30 days after written objectionSellerFAR/BAR contract, Standard AGap search performedHours before recordingTitle examinerFlorida title practiceDeed recordedClosing day, or the next business morningClosing agent, county clerkFlorida recording practice

Sources: Florida Realtors and The Florida Bar Residential Contract for Sale and Purchase, Paragraph 9 and Standard A; Florida Statute 718.116(8); standard Florida title and closing practice. Deadlines shift when the parties negotiate different terms in the contract.

Notice how much of the schedule is set by parties outside the transaction. The municipality controls the lien search return. The association controls the estoppel. Those two rows are the ones that most often push a date on residential closings, and both are requested in the first week precisely because nobody can speed them up afterward.

How Long Do Title Searches Usually Take?

Title searches usually take 3 to 7 business days in Florida and about 10 to 14 days as a national average. The gap between those two numbers comes down to how a county keeps its records, not to how hard anyone is working.

County record systems are the variable. Florida counties maintain searchable digital indexes going back decades, so an examiner pulls most documents from a terminal. Many counties elsewhere still require an abstractor to appear at a courthouse and pull physical books. The American Land Title Association found that nearly 27 percent of title professionals still retrieve documents in person often or very often, and every one of those trips adds days.

Volume drives the rest. The same research found that more than 80 percent of purchase transactions require reviewing at least 11 documents, that 21 percent involve more than 50 records tied to a property's ownership history, and that professionals rely on at least 9 different document sources in half of all transactions. A 50-record file takes longer than an 11-record file for reasons that have nothing to do with the county.

How Long Does a Title Search Take in Florida?

A title search takes 3 to 7 business days in Florida for a standard residential property. Older homes, waterfront parcels, and multi-parcel or subdivided properties run 7 to 14 business days.

Three property types account for most of the longer files. Homes built before the 1970s carry more transfers and more handwritten records. Waterfront parcels involve riparian rights, submerged land leases, and shoreline boundary questions. Properties that were split, combined, or replatted require tracing each piece separately.

Digitized county records are why the Miami-Dade baseline sits at the short end of the range. Our own commitments turn around in 24 to 48 hours once the examination is complete, and the pieces that take longer are almost always the third-party items rather than the record review. The items that stretch a file are almost always third-party search delays rather than the record review itself.

What Happens During a Title Search?

During a title search, an examiner reconstructs the property's ownership history from public records and identifies everything recorded against it. The work runs in this order.

1. Confirm the legal description. The examiner matches the description in the contract against the description in the last recorded deed. A mismatch here stops everything else, because the wrong parcel would be searched.
2. Locate the current vested owner. The last recorded deed establishes who holds title today, and that name has to match the seller on your contract.
3. Trace the chain of title backward. Each deed is followed to the one before it, back to a root of title document, checking that every transfer was properly executed and recorded.
4. Search the grantor and grantee indexes for each owner. Every name in the chain is run for judgments, liens, and other claims recorded during the period that person held title.
5. Pull tax records. The examiner confirms property taxes are current and checks whether any tax certificates were sold on the parcel.
6. Identify encumbrances on the parcel itself. Mortgages, easements, restrictive covenants, association declarations, and recorded leases attach to the land regardless of who owns it.
7. Order the municipal lien search separately. Unpaid utility bills, open permits, and code enforcement items are held by the city rather than the county and do not appear in a records examination.
8. Draft the title commitment. The findings are organized into requirements, meaning what must be cleared before closing, and exceptions, meaning what the policy will not cover.

Steps four and six generate most of the curative work. Research from the American Land Title Association found that 36 percent of all transactions require extensive, nonroutine title clearance, that a standard file takes about 22 hours of professional labor while a difficult file takes 45 hours, and that 62 percent of companies typically perform at least four curative actions per transaction. Gathering the closing documents that resolve those findings is a separate track that runs alongside the examination.

What Records Does a Title Search Examine?

A title search examines the recorded documents held by the county clerk plus the tax and court records tied to the property and its past owners. The examination covers the parcel and every person who has held title to it.

• Deeds, including warranty deeds, quitclaim deeds, and personal representative's deeds
• Mortgages and their satisfactions or releases
• Judgment liens, tax liens, and construction liens
• Property tax records and any tax certificates sold on the parcel
• Recorded plats establishing the lot, block, and subdivision boundaries
• Easements, rights of way, and restrictive covenants
• Homeowners association and condominium declarations
• Probate filings, wills, and orders of summary administration
• Divorce decrees and marital settlement agreements affecting the property
• Bankruptcy filings by anyone in the chain of title
• Notices of commencement and any construction liens filed under them
• Court judgments and pending lawsuits, known as lis pendens

Two things sit outside that list and are worth naming. A standard records examination does not include a boundary survey, so encroachments and fence-line problems require a separate survey to catch. It also does not include the municipal items, which is why the city lien search is ordered as its own product. The title company orders both alongside the examination rather than treating them as optional extras.

How Far Back Does a Title Search Go?

A title search goes back 30 to 50 years in most Florida residential transactions. The examiner traces the chain to a root of title document, meaning a recorded transfer old enough and clean enough to serve as a reliable starting point for everything after it.

Root of title is a concept rather than a fixed date. Florida's marketable record title framework allows an examiner to rely on a qualifying deed of a certain age, with claims older than that generally extinguished unless someone preserved them by filing a notice.

Certain properties require reaching further back regardless. Land that was subdivided, combined, or replatted needs each historical piece traced. Parcels that passed through an estate need the probate file reviewed. Waterfront and formerly agricultural land often carries reservations of mineral or riparian rights recorded generations ago that still bind the parcel today.

What Does a Title Search Reveal?

A title search reveals every recorded claim, restriction, and ownership question attached to the property. Most findings are routine and get cleared before closing without the buyer doing anything.

The common findings fall into a short list:

• Unreleased prior mortgages. The debt was paid but the satisfaction was never recorded. The 2026 ALTA study found 59 percent of title professionals name this the single hardest curative task.
• Association charges. Dues, assessments, and transfer fees appear in nearly 57 percent of transactions and must be reconciled through the estoppel certificate.
• Judgment and tax liens. Typically paid from the seller's proceeds at closing through the settlement statement.
• Easements and restrictive covenants. Usually valid and disclosed as exceptions rather than cleared.
• Legal description errors. Corrected by a corrective deed signed by the original parties.
• Gaps or breaks in the chain of title. Resolved through probate, an affidavit of heirs, or a quiet title action depending on the cause.
• A vested owner who does not match the seller. The most serious finding on this list, and the reason the next section exists.

How long each of these takes to resolve, and how that shifts a closing date, is a separate question that sits on the purchase closings side of the process.

Can Someone Legally Sell Your House Without You Knowing?

No, someone cannot legally sell your house without you knowing, but criminals attempt it illegally and the attempts are rising. The scheme is called seller impersonation, and the title search is the primary thing that catches it.

The pattern is consistent. A fraudster identifies a property with an absentee or elderly owner, often vacant land or a rental, then poses as that owner using stolen identity details, lists the property, and pushes for a fast cash closing with remote signing. The real owner learns about it afterward, if at all.

The scale is documented. The FBI's 2025 Internet Crime Complaint Center report put reported real estate fraud losses at 275.1 million dollars, up from about 173 million dollars in 2024, across 12,368 complaints. A May 2024 survey by the American Land Title Association of 783 title insurance companies found that 28 percent had experienced at least one seller impersonation attempt during 2023.

Detection comes from the examination itself. The search establishes who is actually vested in title, and that name has to match the person signing the deed. Identity verification, notary review, and comparing the seller's contact details against the address of record are the follow-on checks. The same verification discipline applies to wire verification at closing, where the losses are largest and recovery is rare.

Is a Second Title Search Done Before Closing?

Yes, a second title search is done before closing. It is called a gap search or a bringdown, it runs in the hours before the deed is recorded, and it covers only the period between the original examination and that moment.

The reason is that a title commitment is accurate as of a specific date and the public record does not stop moving. Documents recorded after that date are invisible to the original search. A creditor can record a judgment against the seller. A contractor can record a claim of lien, and Florida allows that filing up to 90 days after the contractor's final work. A tax certificate can be issued.

The gap search is fast because it is narrow. The examiner runs the parcel and the seller's name forward from the commitment's effective date, which takes minutes rather than days when the county index is current. Recording volume in Miami-Dade is high enough that same-day filings are routine, which is exactly why the check happens as close to recording as the clerk's schedule allows rather than the day before.

Can I Run a Title Search Myself?

You can run a title search yourself using county clerk records, and most Florida counties publish searchable indexes online at no charge. A self-directed search shows you the obvious items and stops well short of what a professional examination produces.

What you will find is real and useful. The current vested owner, the recorded deeds, open mortgages, and any liens filed under the owner's exact name are all visible in a public index. Running that search before making an offer is a reasonable way to spot a problem early.

What you will miss is the harder half. Name variations and misspellings hide judgments from a keyword search. Probate files, bankruptcy filings, and court judgments sit in separate systems. Municipal liens are not in the county index at all. Reading a plat and a chain of title for legal sufficiency is a trained skill, and the output of a self-directed search is a list of documents rather than a title commitment, which means no policy can be issued from it. A step-by-step on how to search it yourself covers the records to pull and where the limits sit.

When Is the Title Search Done on a Cash Purchase?

On a cash purchase, the title search is done at the same point in the contract period, and it usually finishes sooner. Removing the lender removes the appraisal and the underwriting, so the title work becomes the longest task in the file rather than one track among several.

That change in position matters more than it sounds. On a financed purchase, the search finishes while underwriting is still running, so a slow examination costs nothing. On a cash purchase, every day the search takes is a day added to the closing date, because nothing else is running in parallel.

Cash buyers also lose the lender's oversight. No underwriter is reviewing the file independently, and no lender's policy is being issued, so the closing agent is the only professional examining the record before the money moves. New construction adds its own timing wrinkle on top of that, because a new construction lot carries lien exposure a resale does not.

When Is the Title Search Done on a Refinance?

On a refinance, the title search is done after the loan application is submitted and before the loan closes. There is no purchase contract, so the lender's order to the closing agent is what starts the work.

A refinance search is normally narrower than a purchase search. The owner has not changed, so the examiner is confirming that nothing new has attached since the last policy was issued, checking for liens, judgments, and association claims recorded during the current ownership.

Timing runs shorter as a result, often 2 to 5 business days. A prior owner's policy on the same property can also qualify the new lender's policy for a reissue rate, which lowers the premium, though the reissue rate is not applied automatically and you have to supply proof of the earlier policy. Catching that reissue rate is part of the closing services a borrower should expect.

What Happens After the Title Search Is Done?

After the title search is done, the findings are issued as a title commitment and the file moves into clearance. The commitment is the deliverable, and it is the document the 15-day Title Evidence Deadline refers to.

A commitment has two sections a buyer should read on the day it arrives. Requirements list what must be satisfied before a policy can issue, such as paying off a recorded mortgage. Exceptions list what the policy will not cover, such as a utility easement across the rear of the lot. Your five-day examination window starts when the commitment reaches you, and a defect that makes title unmarketable has to be raised in writing inside that window.

Everything after that point is clearance and coordination: payoffs ordered, releases recorded, estoppels reconciled, the lender's conditions satisfied, and the closing scheduled. How many days that stretch takes, and what governs it, is the subject of the post-search closing timeline.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who Pays for a Title Search When Buying a House?

Who pays for a title search when buying a house depends on county custom and on what the purchase contract says. In most of South Florida the buyer carries the owner's policy, the title search, and closing services, while in much of the rest of the state the seller carries them. The standard Florida contract groups those charges into one line item and leaves the allocation to a checkbox, which makes it negotiable.

Can a Title Search Be Done Before Making an Offer?

A title search can be done before making an offer, though a full examination at that stage is uncommon. Buyers considering vacant land, an estate sale, or a property with a complicated ownership history sometimes order a preliminary search first. A basic self-directed look at the county index costs nothing and answers the most useful early question, which is whether the person listing the property is the person vested in title.

What Is the Difference Between a Title Search and a Title Commitment?

The difference between a title search and a title commitment is that the search is the work and the commitment is the document it produces. The search examines public records. The commitment reports the findings, lists the requirements that must be cleared, states the exceptions the policy will not cover, and commits the underwriter to issuing a policy once the requirements are met.

Does a Title Search Include a Survey?

A title search does not include a survey. The search examines recorded documents, while a survey physically measures the property to establish boundaries, improvements, and encroachments. Fence lines crossing a property line, a shed sited over a setback, or a driveway running through a neighbor's parcel are survey findings rather than record findings, which is why a current survey is ordered separately.

Does a Title Search Expire?

A title search does not expire so much as it goes stale. The commitment it produces is accurate only as of its effective date, and most commitments remain usable for about 6 months. Regardless of age, a gap search is performed immediately before recording, because documents filed after the effective date would otherwise pass unnoticed.

What Happens If the Title Search Comes Back Late?

If the title search comes back late, the standard Florida contract gives the buyer a remedy. A buyer who receives the title commitment fewer than 5 days before the Closing Date can extend the closing by up to 5 days after receipt in order to examine it. That extension protects the examination window rather than the closing date itself.

Wrapping It Up

The title search sits in the first half of the contract period even though its results arrive in the second half. The order goes out within three days of an executed contract, the examination runs 3 to 7 business days in Florida, the municipal lien search and the association estoppel run on their own clocks alongside it, and the finished commitment is due to the buyer at least 15 days before the closing date. A second, narrower search runs in the hours before recording, because the public record keeps moving after the first one ends.

Two dates deserve more attention than buyers usually give them. The first is the day the contract reaches the closing agent, because every downstream deadline counts backward from the closing date and a file opened late never recovers those days. The second is the day the commitment arrives, because the five-day examination window starts then and a defect not raised inside it is a defect accepted.

We open files the day a contract reaches us and turn commitments around in 24 to 48 hours once the examination is complete, in English and Spanish, for buyers, sellers, realtors, and lenders. Liberty Title is glad to look at your contract dates and tell you exactly where the search falls in your timeline.

Reach us any weekday, or contact us and we will get back to you the same day.

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