Iowa is one of the last states to do Abstracting—so what is it, exactly?
As part eight of my home-buying process series, today we’ll talk about abstracting.
Iowa is one of the last states that does abstracting. Most states out there have moved to title work, title opinions, and title insurance. Iowa still has abstracts which are literally like binders of information about the property that go way back to when they first started keeping track of who owned it.
“In Iowa, we have Title Guarantee instead of Title Insurance.”
They want to make sure there are no liens on the property, that all the mortgages have been released, and that there’s nothing that could potentially hang up when you’re going to sell. That’s why we have closers that help coordinate updating the abstract and get title opinions from the attorneys. Then the closing companies also help settle any issues or red flags that come up during that attorney title opinion so that we can take care of it, and you can move forward and buy the home.
In Iowa, we have something called Title Guarantee as opposed to Title Insurance. So we’ll be interviewing an expert to go over that for all of us in a future video.
Tuned for part nine of my video series—Getting the utilities in your name and forwarding your mail. If you have any questions, please reach out to me by giving me a call or sending an email. I look forward to hearing from you!
