closing costs

Just closed on a $240k mortgage and had the follow closing costs:
-$650 origination/credit report/tax service
-$400 appraisal
-$505 title service and lender's title insurance
-$1,580 Owner's title insurance
-$298 gov't fees
-$2500 initial escrow accts

Total of about $5,800

What is a typical price for an attorney to charge for a title search in LA? And is it usually flat fee or by the hour? I'm asking this to anyone, just responded to the initial post.

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I am not entirely sure on the specific time periods, but most title searches should go back at least 50-55 years and that is a combination of our acquisitive prescription laws (30 years in bad faith) and some other shite. Maybe a true RE attorney can chime in on that -- I just work at a law firm/title company. I practice in other areas.

My law school professor on the subject said you should really go back all the way, but whats the point with acquisitive prescription? No reason to go back to the land grants/patents.

I want to say that the actual title insurance companies only mandate a title search going back a decade or so on purchase/mtgs and 5 years on refis. I could be wrong on both of those dates. But it is not the 55 year time period for sure. But obviously, title searchers are going to go further back to cover their own arse since the title insurance company comes back to the agent whenever a claim is made.

Title Companies can kinda make their fees up however they want within reason. Just a little FYI - I had a friend at another title company tell me that the average real estate transaction takes 11 man hours.

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I'm assuming acquisitive prescription is what we call adverse possession. I think technically you are supposed to go back as far as possible for every single one. In my current state, 32 years is all that is statutorily required in order for one to avoid liability for failing to discover a defect that occurred prior to that time. Legally, if title is good going back 32 years, then title is good in an absolute sense.

There are, however, situations where you'd still fail to pick up on some things that could effect title, even though you wouldn't be liable for such. An easement is the classic example. Just because it was granted 40 years ago doesn't mean it's not still valid. However, failing to discover this would not result in the attorney being held liable.

I would say that 75% of searches I do take an hour or less. However, every once in a while you do get the 10, 15 hour search that, if you charged a flat fee, would totally screw up your cash flow for that entire week, assuming title searches are where you make most of your money. Perhaps a good scheme would be flat fee for anything that takes under 2 hours and by the hour at your normal rate for everything else.