Real Estate Intel Service Package

What a Preliminary Title Report Contains, Schedule by Schedule

A preliminary title report is a records-based examination of everything the public record says about one parcel, organized the way the title industry organizes it. Schedule A establishes identity: the verified legal description, whether metes and bounds, lot and block, or section township and range, the assessor parcel number, and the current vesting, meaning the exact names and manner in which title is presently held. Schedule B is where the money is: every recorded exception and requirement standing between the parcel and clean conveyance.

Our Real Estate Intel Service Package delivers both schedules plus the ownership analysis a transaction prelim never runs. The chain of conveyance is traced back 30 years with grantor, grantee, instrument type, recording date, and instrument number at every link, so gaps, breaks, and unreleased interests surface with citations. The encumbrance stack is assembled in recording order rather than as a list, because priority is what decides who gets paid. Tax status, easements, restrictive covenants, and lis pendens are read as what they are: conditions that survive the sale and bind whoever takes title next. The chain of title methodology explains the tracing discipline in full.

Report, Commitment, Policy: Three Documents People Confuse

This distinction decides whether you are buying the right thing, so it gets stated plainly rather than blurred. A preliminary title report is a factual examination of the public record: it documents what is recorded against a parcel as of the search date. A title commitment, sometimes issued on an ALTA form, is an insurer’s offer to issue a policy subject to the requirements and exceptions it lists. A title insurance policy is an indemnity contract protecting against certain defects that a search cannot reveal, forgery, undisclosed heirs, recording errors, capacity problems.

U.S. Asset Records is a records research firm, not a title insurance underwriter. This service produces the examination, not an offer to insure, and nothing in the report should be read as a commitment, binder, or policy. That limit is a feature rather than a disclaimer: because no policy is being underwritten, the examination is not shaped by what an insurer is willing to cover, and exceptions that a transactional prelim would simply carve out get investigated instead. When your matter requires an insured closing, a licensed underwriter issues the commitment, and the examination in hand makes that conversation faster.

The Exceptions Are the Report

Most people read Schedule A and skim Schedule B, which is precisely backwards. Exceptions are the recorded claims, restrictions, and interests that ride with the land: deeds of trust and mortgages, judgment liens against the owner that attached automatically on recording, federal and state tax liens, mechanic liens with their own priority rules, HOA assessments, utility and access easements, CC&Rs, mineral and water reservations, and lis pendens announcing that somebody is already litigating over this parcel.

Each one gets read for three things this report always answers: what it encumbers, where it sits in priority, and whether it survives the transaction you are contemplating. A junior lien wiped by a senior foreclosure is a footnote; a tax lien or an unreleased first position is the deal. The report also flags the quiet ones that cost people the most, the unreleased satisfied mortgage still clouding title years later, the ten-dollar-consideration deed to a relative, the easement nobody mentioned that runs through the buildable acre. Where an owner’s broader lien exposure matters, the liens against a property owner analysis extends the same search to the person.

What the $595 Service Adds: the Owner Behind the Parcel

A standard transaction prelim answers one question: what is recorded against this parcel. That is the right question when you are closing a purchase, and our sister company U.S. Title Records, a BBB A+ accredited title research firm operating since 2009, issues exactly that document at $375 across all 3,250+ recording jurisdictions. If you need the transactional examination and nothing further, order it there and pay less.

The $595 Real Estate Intel Service Package exists for the matters where the parcel is not the whole question, because the owner is. It runs the full examination and then keeps going: the entity layer, mapping the LLCs, trusts, and holding companies that hold or control title through Secretary of State filings in all 50 states; the owner’s other recorded holdings and judgment exposure nationwide; vesting read for tenancy by the entireties and similar marital shields that decide what a creditor can reach; and transfer timing dated against your dispute, which is where fraudulent conveyance analysis lives. Litigators, judgment creditors, probate and divorce counsel, and fraud investigators order this version because the recorded exceptions on Schedule B are only half of what they need. Broader subject work runs through the undisclosed asset search.

Who Orders a Preliminary Title Report, and When

What This Market Sells, Read Carefully

The counter-position: a published flat fee with no escrow required, a real 30-year examination with instrument citations, exceptions read for priority and survival, and the owner mapped behind the parcel. The full standard is on what a professional asset search company delivers.

When a Preliminary Title Report Is the Right Document

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$595 flat fee per property. Delivered in 24 to 72 hours. Schedule A and Schedule B, a 30-year chain with citations, and the owner mapped behind the parcel. No escrow required.