Stay the Course , No Distractions.

Transcript: 

Jack Butala:                         Jack Butala with Jill Dewit.

Jill Dewit:                             Hi there!

Jack Butala:                         Welcome to our show today. In this episode, Jill and I talk about why you really need to stay on course, or stay the course, with no distractions. It's harder than it sounds.

Before we get into it, let's take a question posted by one of our members, on the landinvestors.com community. It's free.

Jill Dewit:                             Okay. I love how this is worded.

Brian has a head scratcher on his hands.

Jack Butala:                         (laughs).

Jill Dewit:                             I'm not sure if that was in success plan, or the producer added that, but I felt that was good.

Jack Butala:                         Thank your producer. Thank your producer, Aubrey.

Jill Dewit:                             Said, "A widower wants to sell me her property. It's a nice deal. Husband is on the title, but this is California and they were husband and wife as joint tenants. However, original title has the property equally divided between them, as man and wife, and another single man."

So, where'd that third guy ... wow ...

Jack Butala:                         So here's the thing ...

Jill Dewit:                             Where'd that third guy come from?

Jack Butala:                         Yeah. There's the deed that you're staring at because you want to do the deal right? That's called the vesting deed. Whatever that document says is what you deal with. You do not deal with anything before that.

So if you're going to buy a car, and you're going to buy it from John Smith, whoever owned that car, in that long chain of title if its an old car, it doesn't matter. All you care about is John Smith.

So it sounds to me like the husband, the dead husband and the woman own the property as joint tenants, which really means the woman owns 100 percent of the property and she can convey it.

Jill Dewit:                             Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Jack Butala:                         Even though the guy's dead. That's why you do it in joint tenants; in case somebody dies, the other person gets all the power. The other person gets the equitable title, to be technical about it.

So let's forget about who this other guy [crosstalk 00:01:53] or whether they were single ... it's not 1958.

Jill Dewit:                             Right.

Jack Butala:                         People don't take title as man and wife any longer.

Jill Dewit:                             Exactly and another thing ...

So you're talking about, you're assuming that Brian's gone back a level too far and worrying about what transactions to go?

Jack Butala:                         That's what it sounded like to me.

Jill Dewit:                             Okay.

Jack Butala:                         So here's the thing about these deeding questions. They almost can all be answered with this answer: look at the vesting deed and copy it. Right?

Jill Dewit:                             Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Jack Butala:                         And copy it to the deed that you're producing or make sure that, when you check the title agents work that they're copying it. There's no changes.

Don't make this complicated and always, always if you have a question call the recorder.

Jill Dewit:                             The county. Right.

Jack Butala:                         And if they can't answer it, ask them for the name of an attorney.

Jill Dewit:                             Well let me ...

Jack Butala:                         They all can be answered like that.

Jill Dewit:                             Let me explain one thing too about the assessor, what they do, because if this has been recorded and done, and its been in this way ... let's just say five years.