What is curative title work?

Curative work is unglamorous and it decides closing dates. Most of it is procurement: getting a document from a servicer, a surrogate's court file, an estate fiduciary, a city agency or a predecessor in title, then getting it into recordable form and onto the record in the right order.

The recurring categories are worth knowing by name. Payoff letters and satisfaction follow-up. Lost instrument indemnities where an original note or mortgage cannot be produced. Affidavits of heirship and identity. Entity authority documents for an LLC or corporate seller. Powers of attorney conforming to New York's statutory short form.

Record-keeping errors are their own category. A prior recording indexed against the wrong block and lot, a deed recorded without the required transfer tax return, or a satisfaction indexed under a variant of the borrower's name all show as gaps that need a corrective recording rather than a payment.

Some items cannot be cured on the closing timeline, and the answer becomes an escrow holdback, affirmative insurance from the underwriter over a low-risk item, or a proceeding. Open violations and permits are often escrowed with a deadline and a right to draw on the escrow if the seller misses it.

Do the triage early. Read the commitment the day it arrives, sort B-I into items you control, items the seller controls and items a third party controls, and start on the third-party items first because they set the outside date for the closing.