Best title company in Springfield, 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 Springfield 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. Springfield is about an hour north of our Franklin office, up I-65 and I-24, and we have closed there many times.

We have done this before. 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 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 Springfield

A Springfield 37172 address may be inside the city or out in the county, which decides whether a second tax bill comes, who supplies your power, and whether you need a septic permit and a well-driller's letter - and the Register's office here does no title search and cannot tell you about liens, which is why Vanderpool Law handles the title work itself, before you close.

Look at the address line on your contract: Springfield, TN 37172. Census records put that whole ZIP code in Robertson County, but it runs well past the city limits into farmland, so the address alone does not tell you which Springfield you are buying in. Inside the line, the city sends its own tax bill and runs the electric, gas, water and sewer. Outside it, there is one tax bill, and the lot may live on a septic system and a well. Neither is the better buy. They are different purchases, and the contract should be written for the one you are actually making - which is hard to know until someone reads it with the parcel in front of them.

Send Vanderpool Law a Springfield contract before you sign and ask which side of the city line the house is on: two tax bills and city utilities, or a septic system, a well and maybe a greenbelt history.

Vanderpool Law runs your title search itself, rather than leaving it to a Register's office that by its own rules searches no titles and checks no liens.

Buying in a subdivision still being platted, ask, and Vanderpool Law reads the builder's contract, the plat and the bond status while there is still time to ask for changes.

The Square and downtown. The 1879 courthouse, on the National Register since 1978, sits on a Square whose older commercial buildings are listed too. Buying a building here for a shop downstairs and an office upstairs? Read the zoning before the contract, not after.

County: Robertson County - Springfield, the county seat, was laid out in 1798. Where your deed records: John West, Register - 525 S. Brown St., Suite 211, Springfield, TN 37172; Monday-Friday, 8:00 to 4:30.

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