Best title company in Burns, 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 Burns 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. Burns is about forty minutes west of our Franklin office, out Highway 96 through Fairview, and we have closed there many times.

We have done this before, for buyers and for sellers. We know that convenience is a primary consideration when the closing office is not around the corner, so we make it convenient. We have mobile notaries who come to your kitchen table. In most cases, depending on your particular situation and, if you are buying, your lender, you can close with a remote online notary, which works like a Zoom call except that you are signing. And in special cases we come to you ourselves. Distance is a logistics problem, not a representation problem.

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 Burns

The 37029 ZIP code covers more than forty square miles of Dickson County and the town under four, with the City of Dickson wrapped around three sides of it, so the first thing to settle about the house under your contract is whose line it sits inside - the town's, Dickson's or only the county's - because that decides who taxes it and whose zoning governs it.

Say you have found the house in Burns - a new one off Highway 96, or an older place on Church Street, or a few acres out toward the state park - and the contract is signed or about to be. The form in front of you is the statewide one, and it has nothing to say about what makes a Burns closing its own: a post office name that reaches far past the town line, a deed that goes on record in Charlotte rather than Dickson, a town rule that ties the size of a lot to whether it has sewer, and a county charge on every new house that has to be paid before the permit. Each answer sits in a public office. The job is to get them while the contract still gives you room to act on them.

A Burns question can take four offices to answer - the town's building inspector, the county's planning office, the Water Authority in Dickson and the Register in Charlotte. Ask Vanderpool Law and you get one answer, with the parcel's town, sewer status and plat read against your contract while you can still act.

On a new house off Highway 96, you see the builder's contract, the recorded plat and the county's Adequate Facilities Tax receipt side by side before you sign, not explained to you after.

Buying acreage past the town line? The septic permit, the greenbelt filing and any private-road agreement belong in the contract in writing. Vanderpool Law puts them there, and the complimentary contract review is yours for the asking.

Hickory Cove. DSLD's new section off Florence Cove and Augusta Way, with a model at 101 Florence Cove and homes of three to five bedrooms. The builder's page calls the location Dickson; the recorded plat says which town, if any, the lot is in, and that is the document to read with the contract.

County: Dickson County; the county seat is Charlotte, where the deed is recorded and the Chancery Court sits - not Dickson, and not Burns. Where your deed records: Shelly Yates, Dickson County Administration Building, 4 Court Square, Charlotte, TN 37036.

The full local guide, with its sources, is our Burns 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