How do you pick a title company?
Ask three questions, and let the third one decide. What are your fees for closing and the search? Who does the title search, and how far back? And: will your attorney represent me? The first two separate careful offices from careless ones. The third separates a title company from a law firm, because by Tennessee law a title company cannot represent you, and only a law firm that closes can say yes.
Most people never ask any of the three. They take the name on the list their agent hands them, and the form that comes with that list says it was given as a convenience. Vanderpool Law closes for the same fee a title company charges and represents you, in writing.
Why the third question decides. No corporation or association may practice law in Tennessee, and advising a person about the law for a fee is practicing law. A title company's answer to "will your attorney represent me" is therefore no, by statute, however the office is staffed. Vanderpool Law's answer is yes, under a written engagement, for the same settlement fee.
Tenn. Code Ann. § 23-3-103(a) and § 23-3-101; Tenn. Sup. Ct. R. 8, RPC 1.13; Tennessee REALTORS® form RF 304 (the list is "only as a convenience and a courtesy").What the first two questions tell you
Fees: the settlement fee and the search fee are the office's own; the title insurance premium is the insurer's filed rate and is the same anywhere. An office that won't quote its fees on the phone has told you something. The search: ask who does it and how far back they go. A careful search finds the old lien and the boundary problem before you own them; a careless one finds them at the table. Vanderpool Law searches before you are committed: send us the contract.
Then the only question that matters
"Will your attorney represent me?" At a title company the honest answer is no, and the office that says "we have an attorney on staff" has not said yes. At Vanderpool Law the answer is yes, in writing, and the fee is the same. That is how you pick: not the nearest office, not the one on the list, but Vanderpool Law, the one allowed to be on your side, which reads your contract first, searches the title before you are committed, and represents you at the table. It's the Tennessee Paradox in one decision, and we wrote it up.
Three questions. The third one is ours to answer, and the answer is yes.