Guides

Practical guides to title work.

Practical explanations, sample checks and workflow guides for landmen. Published by The Harness Lab, the maker of TitleDesk; product links are included where they help explain a step.

  • Best landman tools for research and title work — Build a connected toolkit for records, OCR, runsheets, ownership calculations, maps and client delivery, with a synthetic check you can use in a demo.
  • Best landman software: compare workflows — A dated, sourced buyer’s guide to TitleDesk, Enverus Courthouse, IFS iLandMan and Peloton LandView.
  • What is a title runsheet? — A title runsheet is the chronological list of recorded instruments affecting a tract. What goes on it, how citations work, what a gap looks like, and how to check one.
  • How to build a chain of title — Step-by-step: anchor on the source deed, follow prior references, use grantor/grantee indexes, stay on the subject tract, and record every gap. How landmen build a chain of title.
  • Exact-fraction mineral ownership — How compounding decimal rounding corrupts mineral ownership through a chain of title, and how exact rational arithmetic — 1/3 + 1/3 + 1/3 = 1 — avoids cumulative decimal-rounding error in net mineral acres.
  • Curative title defects — A practical guide to curative in oil and gas title: unreleased liens and leases, probate and heirship gaps, missing releases, over-conveyances and patent gaps — and how to write a curative list a landman can actually work.
  • Reading a Texas county index — How Texas county clerk indexes are organized — Deed Records, Official Public Records, Deed of Trust Records — how to search by abstract and by party, and how to read prior references and legal descriptions on an index row.

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