UCC lien search South Carolina - missed prior filing on equipment

You're smart to double-check this before filing. I've seen deals go sideways when lenders discover prior UCC-1 filings after the fact. For South Carolina, you'll want to search both the exact debtor name and variations since even minor spelling differences can hide existing liens. The SC Secretary of State database is decent but sometimes misses filings if there are name variations or if the debtor has changed business structure recently.

We had this exact situation last month with equipment financing. Turned out there was a blanket UCC-1 from 2019 that covered 'all equipment' which would have included our specific machinery. The borrower genuinely didn't know because it was part of a larger credit facility that got paid down but never terminated. I ended up using Certana.ai's document verification tool to cross-check our proposed UCC-1 against existing filings - just uploaded the PDFs and it flagged the conflict immediately. Saved us from filing a potentially subordinated lien.

OMG yes please be careful with this! We got burned on a similar deal where there was an old UCC-1 that nobody knew about. The original lender had been acquired by another bank and the loan got transferred but the UCC filing was never updated. It took MONTHS to sort out the lien priority mess. Now I always do the most thorough search possible before any equipment financing.

The SC SOS search is free but honestly it's not the most user-friendly system. You have to be really careful about how you enter the debtor name. I usually try multiple variations - with and without punctuation, different abbreviations, etc. Also check if the borrower has any DBA names or previous corporate names that might have been used on older filings.

I hate the whole UCC search process tbh. Why can't these state systems be more intuitive? Half the time I feel like I'm playing detective trying to figure out if there are prior liens. And don't get me started on trying to determine if an old filing has actually been terminated or if it just lapsed.

For equipment deals like this I always recommend getting a professional UCC search report from a title company or search service. Yeah it costs a few hundred bucks but it's worth it for the peace of mind on a $180K deal. They have access to better databases and know all the tricks for finding hidden liens.

Whatever you do, don't rush this search process. I learned the hard way that it's better to delay closing by a few days than to discover a prior lien after you've already funded the loan. The borrower might be pressuring you to move fast but protecting your lien position is more important than their timeline.

Have you checked if the equipment might be subject to any fixture filings? Industrial printing presses are sometimes considered fixtures if they're attached to the building. That would require a different type of search in the real estate records too.

I ran into something similar recently and ended up using one of those document comparison tools to make sure everything aligned properly. After doing the manual searches, I uploaded all the documents to Certana.ai just to double-check that our proposed UCC-1 wouldn't conflict with anything I found. It actually caught a potential issue with overlapping collateral descriptions that I had missed in my manual review.

Just an update - I ended up doing both a manual search and hiring a professional search company. Found two old UCC-1 filings that the borrower wasn't aware of, but both had lapsed without continuation so they're no longer valid liens. Still glad I checked thoroughly before filing our UCC-1. Thanks everyone for the advice!