Sean, how do you know what loan (1st versus 2nd, 3rd) is being auctioned off at the Trustee Sale?

I am new to this whole trustee sale but have learned alot from your forum.

Also, how do you obtain title insurance after you win the bid? When you decide to sell that house later on, will it be harder to sell because of the lost of chain in title?

Is there anyway to order prelim title cheaply?

In addition, is there a good book or resource out there that details on how to buy at a Trustee Sale for Rookies?

Position (1st, 2nd, 3rd) is determined by the order in which the loans were recorded, unless a subordination agreement was recorded (the purpose of which is to change the order).

You can get title insurance by contacting a title company. Note that some may be hesitant to insure you, though you can usually get around that by excluding insurance from any lawsuits resulting from the trustee sale itself (title co’s are worried that perhaps you colluded or did something illegal in obtaining the property and don’t want to take on that risk).

Never had any issue getting title insurance when I have resold… unless of course there remains an outstanding title issue (like a valid loan or lien) which of course needs to be cleaned up first.

You don’t really need a full prelim. I know quite a few auction investors who have their title co lookup loan positions for them… but note the title company won’t bail them out if they give bad info.

Have not found ANY good books on buying at auction.

Actually Larry Blachman has a nice little book on buying at trustee sale for $29, available at: http://www.larryblachman.com/.

If there were two recordings on the same day, on the same property is the one with the lower number considered the first and the other a second even though they were both loans from the same bank (or not) yet both recorded the same time. Thank you for clearing this up.

That’s right… order of recording, by date AND document number.