Choosing a Lawyer over a Title Company When Closing a Home
By Paul Burkhart | Published on July 27, 2011 | 0 Comments
Buying a new home in Florida is often a long and complicated process that requires lots of work. Homeowners put so much care into inspecting every nook and cranny of a home and comparing prices that they sometimes neglect important last steps of the process in their excitement to seal a deal. One of these important steps is the closing of a home, which requires the drafting of documents that could affect how smoothly a sale plays out. When in this final stage, one could either go with a title company or hire a real estate lawyer in Palm Beach Gardens that can take care of your closing needs.
Paul Burkhart is one such real estate attorney in Palm Beach Gardens with the Law Offices of Paul J. Burkhart, and he says that going with a lawyer has several benefits. “Though Florida is not one of those states where one must have a lawyer for a closing, there are many reasons to go with a law firm that does title as opposed to a regular title company,” Burkhart says. One example of the benefits a law firm provides is in-house lease or deed drafting. “If you need legal documents drafted up, often a title company will have to lease out to another lawyer since they don’t have one on staff, whereas we have the ability and authorization to draft documents ourselves.”
Further, Burkhart says there can be questions of a legal nature that arise and a title company may not have a lawyer readily available to properly answer those questions. According to Burkhart, there might even be what amounts to “legal landmines” that bubble to the surface when preparing a closing deed that needs the expert eye of a Palm Beach Gardens real estate lawyer. “We essentially will locate these landmines and things they may not otherwise notice which can add some significant legal ramifications.” For instance, Burkhart mentions that the financing provision can be one of the most heavily litigated provision in the agreement and it can have any number of snares that holds up a sale.
“The financing provision says the individual has to have a good faith effort to get financing under certain terms and I often find that these financing contingencies have a lot of murkiness there, and it’s a very important piece. Fortunately, we know the trouble that can arise form not drafting that properly,” says Burkhart. To illustrate, Burkhart cites an example where someone makes a “good faith effort” to find a loan, but they can only receive one with 8% interest. “So this raises the question – what is acceptable financing? Anything over 6% interest is not a loan I want to agree to.”
The bottom line, Burkhart says, is that purchasing a home should be done properly from the moment one begins to search until the final signature closing the deal, and just because the closing is the last step in the process does not make it any less important than the earlier ones. So if you are in the process of buying a home, consider hiring an experienced real estate attorney in Palm Beach Gardens to help you close your dream home in a way that a normal title company can’t.
*Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only. You should not rely on this article as a legal opinion on any specific facts or circumstances, and you should not act upon this information without seeking professional counsel. Publication of this article and your receipt of this article does not create an attorney-client relationship.