Casa Y Tierra

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Bottom line up front: CYT failed to perform the most basic responsibilities of a title company - clearing and delivering the title to my cabin - for more than a year until I finally managed to force them to do so.

In late 2018 my wife noted that we had not received our tax bill. She contacted Otero County and discovered they had sent the bill to a person we had never heard of. We then contacted CYT to find out why the tax office had the wrong owner. We were assured they would take care of the problem, but they never called us back. Our taxes became delinquent and we could not pay them, leaving us to fear foreclosure.

Thus, one year after closing, we searched our closing paperwork and discovered that we had never received the title to our property nor the title insurance we paid for. Repeated inquiries with CYT went unanswered until we visited the county treasurer and tax authority, where we learned they too had been trying to resolve this problem for several months and likewise had been ignored by CYT.

Around this time CYT informed us they were trying to resolve the problem by obtaining the original deed from the people who sold us the property. Fortunately these people lived in El Paso, and I was able to visit them personally and obtain their signature on a document provided by Otero County to clear the title. At exactly the same time, CYT finally delivered the necessary paperwork to Otero County, clearing the title and making my paperwork redundant. Nevertheless, my visit to the sellers was important, because I learned that their parents had sold the property in 2006 to the owner of Southwest Escrow company, who stopped making payments about five years later, at which time the parents took the property back. That person is now serving 20 years for defrauding her customers, and Southwest Escrow is out of business.

I also learned that our sellers had provided all the necessary papers to CYT at the time of closing, so it remains a mystery why they sat on it for a year until I finally threatened to sue. I'm giving CYT 2 stars rather than one because I accept responsibility for not holding their feet to the fire a year ago as I should have. Nevertheless I caution you to find a title company interested in doing its job.