You negotiated with someone, agreed a price and signed a contract. Then title comes back and the person you dealt with cannot actually convey the property.
This stops more deals than price does, and nearly every instance was discoverable on the first phone call.
General information rather than legal advice. Authority to convey, probate procedure and entity requirements are all state-specific. Take any question about who can sign to a local attorney.
The Situations That Come Up
An estate with no appointed representative. The owner died and nobody has been through the process that grants someone authority to act. Until that happens, there is generally nobody who can sell.
Multiple heirs. Several people inherited, all of them have an interest, and all of them may need to sign.
A deceased co-owner never removed. Common with long-held property. The surviving spouse believes they own it outright and title still shows two names.
A trust. The trustee may have authority to sell, and it depends on the trust document and sometimes on the beneficiaries.
An entity. An LLC or corporation owns it, and whoever you spoke to may not be authorized to bind it.
Divorce. Both parties are on title, a decree may address the property, and a court may need to approve.
Someone acting under a power of attorney. Which may or may not extend to selling real estate.
A minor or an incapacitated owner. Which generally requires court involvement.
Ask on the First Call
Two questions, and they take fifteen seconds.
Who is on the deed? Not who owns it, which people answer loosely. Who is named on the document.
Is anyone on it who has died, or is anyone else involved in the decision? Phrased that way, it catches the deceased spouse and the sibling in another state at the same time.
Most people answer straightforwardly. Where someone downplays it, the reason is usually that they intend to bring the other party round without your involvement, and knowing that early changes how you handle the deal, per multiple decision-makers.
Then verify against the public record rather than relying on the answer, since owners are frequently wrong about what title says.
Estates, Which Are the Common Case
These appear constantly, so the outline is worth having.
When someone dies, authority to deal with their property generally comes through a court process, and the person granted it is usually called an executor or personal representative depending on the state.
Before that appointment exists, there is typically nobody who can convey. Heirs who all agree still may not be able to sign until the process has reached a point that permits it.
What varies enormously is how long that takes, whether the sale needs court approval, and whether a simplified process is available for smaller estates.
The practical implication is that a probate deal is a timeline question rather than a negotiation question, and the closing date has to accommodate a process nobody in the transaction controls, explored in probate real estate.
What to Ask For
Documentation rather than assurances, and the title company will want it anyway.
For an estate: the court document appointing the representative, and confirmation of what it authorizes.
For a trust: the trust document or a certification of trust, showing the trustee and their powers.
For an entity: the operating agreement or resolution showing who may sign, plus confirmation the entity is in good standing.
For a power of attorney: the instrument itself, checked for whether it covers real property and whether it is still effective.
Requesting these early is not distrust. It is the same documentation the closing agent will require, and getting it in week one rather than week three is the entire difference, discussed in working with a title company.
Powers of Attorney Specifically
Used more than investors expect and misunderstood.
A power of attorney lets one person act for another. Whether it permits selling real estate depends on its terms, and general authority may not be sufficient in some jurisdictions for a property conveyance.
It also has to be currently effective. A power of attorney generally terminates on the death of the person who granted it, which means one signed by someone who has since died is no longer usable, and this catches people in exactly the situations where it would be most convenient.
Some are springing, meaning they take effect only on a defined event such as incapacity, which then has to be established.
Title companies scrutinize these carefully and are right to. Confirm early whether yours will be accepted rather than discovering it at closing.
Entity-Owned Property
Increasingly common and mechanically straightforward once you know what to ask.
The question is who is authorized to bind the entity. That comes from the operating agreement or bylaws, and sometimes from a resolution passed for the transaction.
A member of an LLC is not automatically able to sell its property, particularly where there are several members.
The entity also has to be in good standing with the state, and one that has been administratively dissolved may need reinstating before it can convey, which takes time.
Both are checkable in advance through the state business registry, described in where to get motivated seller lists.
Verifying Identity
The step title companies handle and investors should think about earlier.
Deed fraud exists. Someone purporting to own a vacant or absentee-owned property, with plausible documentation, attempting to sell something they do not own. Vacant land and long-vacant houses are the usual targets, because nobody is there to notice.
The signals are recognizable. Unusual urgency. A seller who will not meet in person. A mailing address that does not match anything in the record. Insistence on a specific closing agent. Reluctance to provide identification.
Title companies verify identity and this is one of the things they are for. What you can do earlier is match the person to the record: does the name align, does the mailing address on the tax record make sense, and has anything about the ownership changed recently.
Where something does not fit, raise it with the title company rather than working around it, covered in working with a title company.
When Someone Cannot Sign
The situations that need more than paperwork.
A missing heir who cannot be located. An owner who lacks capacity. A co-owner who refuses. A boundary or ownership dispute.
Each of these has a legal route and each takes months rather than weeks. None of them is your problem to solve, and it is worth being clear with the seller about that.
The practical response is to establish whether the obstacle is a timeline or a wall. A missing document is a timeline. A co-owner who will not agree is a wall, and continuing to work it is the pursuit described in when to walk away.
Capacity, and Slowing Down
The one situation where the right answer is to be less efficient.
Doubt on that point is a reason to stop, bring in family or counsel, and let the transaction take longer than it otherwise would.
This protects them, and it protects the transaction, since an agreement signed by someone who lacked capacity can be challenged afterward, sometimes long afterward.
It also protects you reputationally in a way that matters more than a single deal, set out in talking to sellers in difficult circumstances.
Heirship Without Probate
A situation worth knowing about because it is common and investors assume the deal is dead.
Where an owner died and no probate was opened, several states offer simplified routes for transferring or establishing title, particularly for smaller estates or where the heirs agree.
The mechanisms vary and go by different names. Some involve a sworn statement of heirship recorded against the property. Some involve a simplified court procedure. Some depend on how title was held in the first place, since certain forms of joint ownership pass automatically on death without any process at all.
That last point matters and is routinely missed. A property held in a form with survivorship rights may already belong entirely to the survivor, with the only step being to record the death certificate.
None of that is something to work out yourself. It is a question for the title company and an attorney, and the useful thing is knowing to ask rather than assuming a death means probate, per out-of-state heirs.
The Check That Takes Five Minutes
Before writing an offer, pull the deed from the county record and read who is named.
Compare that to who you have been speaking to. Where they differ, ask why before proceeding rather than after.
That single check catches the deceased co-owner, the entity, the trust and the heir situation, all of which are solvable early and expensive late. It costs five minutes and it is the highest-return diligence step available, worked through in the paperwork of a real estate deal.