Legal Question in Real Estate Law in Maryland

Re: Quiet Claim

There is such a thing as a "Quit Claim Deed". I don't know if you misspelled a word in your question, or if you are confusing this with with another principle called a "quiet title action" which is a type of lawsuit that would be unrelated to your facts.

My advice is that you would be "pennywise and pound foolish" to do this yourself. The cost to have an attorney properly prepare the papers the papers and then make sure that they are properly executed and filed will be modest. This is especially true in terms of comparing the cost to what is going to be at stake ... valuable real estate in which you going to invest a substantial amount of further resources.

It will also offer you some protection in case there is some type of error made in the process (i.e. if YOU make an error you have only yourself to blame .. if you hire an attorney and he/she makes an error you can blame them ..and their malpractice carrier -- you may want to ask your attorney if they carry malpractice insurance .. most do but it is not required).

Also, you probably want to have a title search done and then purchase some title insurance. Even though the property is coming by gift from a family member, you want to make sure that the title is clear and that there are no encumbrances on the property because that could affect you later (for example if there are liens, easments and/or restrictions you will want to know what they are before you spend money improving the property in any way).

If you are planning on improving the property with the assistance of a bank loan, you may want to consider doing all of this at the same time. Any bank is going to want to conduct a title search at the time of the loan anyway(and the cost will be built-into your closing on any loan) so you will pay for the title search only once if you do this at the same time. You'll still need to purchase some title insurance though.)

Please fee to give me a call if you have any further questions.