How Do I Find Out If There Is A Mortgage On A Property?
Honestly, it is very easy to find out mortgage and other related information on properties. Read below to know.
Now that everything is online and the world literally worships the internet, it comes as no surprise that technical information is publicly available on the web.
Mortgages are public documents that are available for everyone to see. If you like a house and see a mortgage note on it, you can find out which company owns it by simply browsing through the internet. In this article we’re going to tell you ways to find out if there is a mortgage on the property.
How to find mortgage information on a property?
Search Official Online Records
This is by far the easiest way that you can look for a mortgage on a specific property. Many countries have their own specific database where property information is stored. All you have to do is head to the relevant county, type in the property address and it will show you details of the property.
Next, you can click on the link of ‘recorded documents’ and it will pull up a list of all the mortgages transfers and the trust deeds related to the property. Click on the most recent name in the list and you’ll know who owns the mortgage on that property.
Real Estate Websites
Searching for public records can be confusing, because you could see yourself looking at a bunch of numbers and figures that you don’t even understand. For a more specific approach, searching for properties on real estate websites is the best option.
For this, go on the top websites in your county and enter the exact address of the property. The algorithm will run through its database and pull up the property and tax history. With this you’ll know how much it has been on sale for, and if the pricing has changed over time. Realtor and Zillow and Trulia show such information for customer’s ease.
Third-Party Websites
This is another way to gather sensitive property information, Property Shark is one of the third-party websites that lets users get information about properties, tax history, mortgages etc. Some of these websites let you search only a few things in the database for free, but further information requires subscription fees. The fees are nominal and gives you access to mortgage information on your desired property.
County Records Office
If you’re not too tech savvy or if you didn’t find anything worthwhile on the internet, you can personally go and visit the county records office. Since most properties don’t have information available online, you can visit the office and ask a representative to help you look for a property.
They would search in their own personal database and fetch information like the homeowners name, tax history, mortgages etc. for you. Of course, they might charge a nominal fee from you for providing you with access to their database.
Hire a Title Company
There are companies designated to search for properties to look for cheap ones or for filing purposes. If all else fails and you’re not able to gather information on your own, you can hire someone to do the job for you.
This way you will be free of all the hassle yourself and have a company handle the records professionally. These companies are pro at fetching mortgage records on different properties. Of course, hiring a company to do the job for you will relatively cost you more money.
Review
Once you’ve gotten all the information you need about a specific property, take all of the information to your real estate agent. He will review the numbers and tell you all the information about the property looking only at the data you provided them.
Best Mortgage Lenders 2020
Once you’ve found your dream property and also found out information on it, the next best thing to do is look for the best mortgage lender and their rates.
Here is a list of the best mortgage lenders in the country, especially if you’re a first-time buyer. This table below shows how much Annual Percentage (APR), Interest rate and term length of the mortgage of each of these companies is.
| Lender | APR | Interest rate | Term length |
| Rocket Mortgage by Quicken Loans | 2.75%–3.75% | 3.402%–4.798% | 10-, 15- and 30-year fixed-rate loans |
| Guild Mortgage | 3.335%–3.816% | 2.90%–3.51% | 10- to 30-year fixed-rate mortgages
3-, 5-, 7- and 10-year ARM |
| Navy Federal Credit Union | 2.338%–4.149% | 2.750%–3.875% | 10- to 30-year fixed and adjustable-rate home loans |
| Chase | 2.611%–2.933% | 2.490%–2.875% | 15- to 30-year fixed-rate mortgages
5- and 7-year ARM |
| USAA Mortgage | 3.717%–4.850% | 3.500%–4.625% | 10- to 30-year fixed-rate mortgages
5-year ARM |
| SunTrust Mortgage | 2.4858%–2.9303% | 2.700%–2.800% | 15- to 30-year fixed-rate mortgages
5-year ARM |
| New American Funding | 2.610%–2.940% | 2.250%–2.750% | 15- to 30-year fixed-rate mortgages
3-, 5- and 7-year ARM> |
Note: Sample rates have been extracted online, courtesy of TheSimpleDollar.
Conclusion
You’re lucky if you’ve actually found the property of your dreams, the next step is to actually buy it. Mortgages are the only option to do it, and that’s a fact. As part of your background search on the property, you can use any of these ways described above to gather important information especially its tax history and mortgages.
Once you’ve acquired everything you need, you can head to the mortgage company who owns the property. If they’re willing to lend the loan to buy the property, well and good. If that property is not on mortgage, you can buy it by going to any one of these companies mentioned above and see how much they’re offering you.
Of course, keeping your credit history and debts in mind you have to make sure it’s a loan you can afford and will be able to pay back during the next few years.
