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By Nashville Indiana Title Company
Two Checks You Should Make the Week Escrow Opens Escrow opens and most of it hums along without you. Your agent sends the signed purchase agreement, we ...
Escrow opens and most of it hums along without you. Your agent sends the signed purchase agreement, we open a file, earnest money lands in the account, and the search gets ordered. Good.
But there are two things worth a few minutes of your own attention that first week, because getting them right early saves you a scramble closer to the table.
Neither one is complicated. Both are things we'd rather catch on day two than day thirty.
Pull up the purchase agreement and look at how your name is written. That exact spelling is going to flow into the deed, the title commitment, and eventually into the record at the Brown County Recorder's office. Once your deed records, that spelling is how you own the property, so it's worth a careful look now.
Think about the version of your name on your driver's license and on your loan paperwork. Do they match? A middle initial on one and a full middle name on another isn't a disaster, but it's the kind of small mismatch that's easier to sort out in week one than during a signing when everyone's ready to be done.
This matters more than people expect for a few specific situations. If you're buying with a spouse, decide now how both names should read and whether you want them held together a particular way. If you're buying through a trust or an LLC, the exact legal name of that entity has to be right, letter for letter.
And if you've changed your name recently, that's the week to mention it, not the morning of closing.
We see this most often with buyers moving to Brown County from Indianapolis or Cincinnati who have slightly different name versions floating around on old documents. It's normal. We just want the one true version for your deed, confirmed early, so nothing has to get retyped clean later.
The purchase agreement describes the property. Read that description against what you believe you're actually buying. On a downtown Nashville lot this is usually straightforward.
On wooded acreage near the state park, it's worth real attention.
Here's where rural Brown County property earns a closer look. The legal description might reference a creek bed, an old fence line, or a point on a neighbor's property rather than clean street-grid boundaries. That's not a problem.
It's just how a lot of land out here got described decades ago, and it means the "where" of your property deserves a second read.
Ask yourself a few plain questions that first week. Is there a well, and is it only yours or shared with a neighbor? Is there a septic system?
Is there a shared driveway, a private road, or an easement that lets someone cross the land? These aren't things to panic about. They're things we want to know about while there's plenty of runway to look into them.
If you walked the property with your agent, picture the boundaries you were shown and whether they square with the acreage on paper. A fence in the woods doesn't always sit on the actual property line. The old survey in the file might predate the fence by years.
Flagging any of that in week one gives the title search time to do its job instead of raising a question the week you're supposed to sign.
Because time is the thing that makes everything else easy. A name correction caught on day two is a quick fix. The same correction caught the day before closing means re-drafting documents and chasing signatures under pressure.
The same is true for property questions. When we open your file at Nashville Indiana Title Company, we start the search right away, and the search is where easements, liens, shared wells, and boundary quirks surface. If you've already told us what you're expecting to find, we can match your understanding against what the record shows and flag any gap while it's still small.
Escrow has a rhythm. Documents get ordered, the search runs, the lender does its part, and it all converges on a closing date. The two checks above are the ones that live on your side of that rhythm, and they're the two most likely to cause last-minute shuffling if they sit untouched.
If your name matches everywhere and reads the way you want it on the deed, you're done. Tell us and move on. If something's off, even slightly, send us the correct version and we'll make sure it carries through.
If the property description raises a question... a well you're not sure about, an easement you didn't expect, a boundary that doesn't feel right... tell us or your agent that week. We'd far rather hear "can you look into this?" early than have it turn up as a surprise on the commitment.
You don't need to become an expert on deeds or legal descriptions to do this well. You just need to glance at two things with fresh eyes while the file is young: your name, and your land. The folks who do close calmly, more often than not, are the ones who gave those two a few minutes up front.
That's the whole point of opening escrow early and keeping it moving. Small things handled in week one stay small. We'll carry the rest.