Curative timelines that protect your lock.
You cannot control what turns up on Schedule C. You can control whether you find out on day three or day twenty-eight.
Rate locks are priced in days, and curative work is not. The gap between those two facts is where extension costs come from. The fix is not working faster. It is finding out sooner.
What tends to clear quickly
- Judgments belonging to someone with a similar name, resolved with an affidavit of identity
- Existing mortgage payoffs
- Current year tax prorations
- Routine tax certificates
What depends on a third party's speed
- HOA payoffs and resale certificates. Not difficult, frequently slow. Order the day the file opens.
- Judgment liens against a homestead. A judgment lien does not attach to a Texas homestead, but proving homestead and obtaining a partial release from the creditor commonly takes a couple of weeks.
- Powers of attorney and entity documents. Approval time, not signature time.
- Child support liens. Releases come from the state on the state's schedule.
- Medicaid estate recovery. If a deceased owner received certain long term care benefits, the state may have a claim against the estate that has to be resolved before the file can move.
- Municipal liens. Mowing, demolition, and code enforcement items clear at city hall speed.
- Payoffs and releases from servicers that have changed hands, where the current holder is not obvious.
Treat this as a sample rather than a list. Anything requiring a signature, a release, a payoff figure, or an approval from someone outside the transaction belongs in this category, and the delay is rarely about difficulty. It is about that party's queue. When you see an item you have not run into before, ask your escrow officer how long it usually takes rather than assuming it is routine.
What will not fit inside a thirty day lock
- Federal tax liens requiring discharge. If there is not enough equity to pay the lien at closing, the discharge process runs well past a typical lock.
- Probate, heirship, and determinations of heirship. Court calendars are not negotiable, and a determination of heirship with an attorney ad litem takes months rather than weeks.
- Unreleased liens from Lenders that no longer exist. Tracking down a successor to a bank that failed a decade ago is unpredictable by nature.
- Disputed mechanic's liens. A contractor who believes they are owed money is a negotiation, not a paperwork item.
How to protect the lock
- Order title at application, not at approval. The commitment is the only document that tells you what the curative picture looks like, and everything downstream depends on it.
- Read Schedule C the day it arrives and triage it against your lock expiration rather than against the closing date.
- Ask three questions early: is any owner deceased, are there tax debts, and is anyone signing who is not on title.
- Call rather than email when something looks long. A five minute conversation with the escrow officer usually produces a realistic timeline, which is what you actually need to decide whether to extend.
- Extend early if you extend. Extension pricing rewards the Lender who acts on day ten and punishes the one who waits until day twenty-eight.
The one habit that changes outcomes
Treat the title commitment as a scheduling document, not a compliance document. Most files that blow a lock did not have a harder problem than the files that closed on time. They had the same problem, discovered three weeks later.
Every file is different, and underwriters can view the same facts differently depending on the details. Always consult your escrow officer, who can take the specifics to the underwriter. Title and Lender requirements are also separate, so clearing one does not mean you have cleared the other.