Risk Management Blog

Having a rapid turn-around time for your pre-funding lien searches is important. Borrowers are looking for quick funding solutions and slow turn-around time for lien searches can extend your funding cycle, frustrating prospective clients and tarnishing your reputation in the industry. Earlier this month, First Corporate Solutions began a four-part blog series devoted to providing our readers with tips for improving the turn-around time for lien searches.

This Week’s Tip: Provide as Much Information as Possible to your Searcher for Offline Searches
In Part One of this series, we discussed online searching as a method for improving the turn-around time for state-level lien searches. While online searching at the state level is often a good choice for improving turn-around time, online resources are not the best choice for every type of search. Always remember to find out the source of the data prior to using any private online search system as third party data can include typographical and other data entry errors that jeopardize the integrity of your search result.

In addition, county-level lien searches on private search systems can also be unreliable due to irregular data collection practices and through date concerns. Therefore, some searches efforts are best completed as a manual (offline) search requests placed with your preferred vendor. In these cases, be sure to provide as much information as possible when initiating your search request. Here’s why.

When you place a search request with a vendor, the searcher scours the index for liens that match the basic target name you’ve provided, then eliminates all records they can based on a variety of criteria such as lapse dates, middle initials, social security numbers, etc. Any lien that cannot be eliminated is reported to you as a finding. Sorting through the initial search results takes time, particularly for common names or those with a lot of filing activity. If you have a middle initial or social security number for an individual, provide that when placing your order to speed up the elimination process. Please note, many filing offices are now redacting social security numbers from filings due to privacy concerns, but others still keep the last four digits on documents to help identify debtors.

Check back next week for another Tip for Improving Turn Around Time for Lien Searches!

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