Best title company in Arrington, Tennessee?

The truth about a title company

Every title company in Tennessee issues the same policy at the same rate filed with the state. The settlement fee runs about the same from office to office, usually $500 to $900. What varies is care and speed, and some of the offices in and around Arrington are very good at both. But none of them can tell you what your contract means, what to do when the seller skips the repair or the earnest money is in dispute, or whether to sign. The law forbids it.

What the Tennessee legislature said about it

The Paradox: Tennessee law protects your right to choose who closes your real estate deal. Tennessee law also says a title company cannot practice law or give legal advice.

The Result: use that right to choose a title company, and you have put the biggest and most important legal and financial transaction most people will ever have in their lives in the hands of an office that is forbidden from advising you or protecting your interests.

This is the confusing part for the consumer. There is an attorney in most of these offices. You see a lawyer at the closing table and think, I have legal representation. You don't. The reason you don't is that the Tennessee legislature said you can't: a company cannot practice law, and the lawyer who works for a company represents the company. "Attorney-owned," "attorney-led" and "attorney-supervised" describe the business, not you.

How Vanderpool Law is different

The question to ask is who at this table is allowed to be on my side. At a title company, no one. At Vanderpool Law and Title Services, we can, and we frequently do. We have helped more than 15,000 people all over Tennessee navigate the tricky legal and financial situations that arise in everyday residential and commercial real estate transactions. There is very little we haven't seen. We do the title work, we close for the same fee a title company charges, and we represent you. Arrington is about twenty minutes east of our Franklin office, out Highway 96, and we have been closing there since 2002.

At a title company there is a reason you never get an engagement letter: you are not represented. At Vanderpool Law you are, and it says so in writing. Sending us a contract does not make you our client; an engagement letter does. The reason is simple. You have a lawyer on your side, not one who works for a title company.

Closing in Arrington

In Arrington the house under your contract may stand behind a gate with its own wastewater plant and club dues, on acreage with a septic permit and a greenbelt bill behind it, or on the Rutherford County end of a ZIP code everyone calls Williamson - the form names none of that, so here is what to pull while you can still change course.

You found it on a Sunday drive out Highway 96 - a new house behind a gate, or acreage with a barn and a view toward the vineyard - and now a contract sits in your inbox with your name on it. It is the same Tennessee REALTORS form a buyer signs in Memphis, and it has no idea it is in Arrington. It does not say who governs the land (there is no town here, only the county), where the house sends its wastewater, whether the creek at the bottom of the lot comes with a flood zone, or whether the deed belongs in Franklin or Murfreesboro. Every answer is already on file somewhere. Pull them while the inspection period is open and walking away still costs you nothing but a weekend.

An Arrington question can run through four offices - county planning, the septic department, a utility district and a club manager. Ask Vanderpool Law and you get one answer from people who know which office holds which piece.

Buying behind a gate in Kings Chapel or Fox Farms, ask, and Vanderpool Law reads the covenants, the club terms and the builder's paperwork with you before any of them bind you.

Every Williamson deed records in Franklin, where our office is, and the Rutherford ones in Murfreesboro, where we close too - whichever end of 37014 your parcel sits on, the register is a familiar counter.

Kings Chapel. A 700-acre gated community on Meadowbrook Boulevard with its own club, seven creeks and a rebuilt 1815 chapel beside it; Wikipedia counts more than 420 homes. Two sets of papers bind you here, the recorded covenants and the club's terms, so ask for both before the contract's deadlines run.

County: Williamson County (county seat: Franklin) - Arrington is unincorporated, and the 37014 ZIP code also has a segment in Rutherford County. Where your deed records: Williamson County Register of Deeds, Sherry Anderson, 1320 West Main St., Suite 201, Franklin, TN 37064 (Rutherford-side parcels: Heather Dawbarn, 319 N. Maple Street, Room 133, Murfreesboro, TN 37130).

The full local guide, with its sources, is our Arrington page.

How we can help you

Before you sign or after, every buyer and every seller gets four complimentary services: contract review, a preliminary title search, a preliminary settlement statement, and a savings check. All you have to do is ask. Send us the contract and see your settlement statement in about five minutes; then talk it over with Jim Vanderpool, who answers your questions as your lawyer, complimentary. When you decide to hire us, the engagement letter says what we do for you and what it costs, which is the fee a title company charges.

The questions behind the search