Closing Attorney & Title Services in Putnam County, TN

Maybe it is ten acres off a gravel road north of Algood, a lake lot near Silver Point, or the house your parents kept outside Monterey that now has to be sold. The contract is the same Tennessee REALTORS form a Cookeville subdivision uses, and it quietly assumes rules that out in the county are often missing. Nobody has zoned the field next door, the house may live on its own septic system and well, and a view of the lake does not come with a dock. Each of those is a question for the days before you sign, not the weeks after.

Start with which rules apply. The county's planning office puts it in one line: Putnam has no county-wide zoning. Outside the towns the county enforces its subdivision regulations and a floodplain rule that reaches only FEMA's mapped 100-year flood areas. Algood, Baxter, Cookeville and Monterey are different - each keeps its own zoning ordinance, zoning map and subdivision rules. So on rural land, what goes up on the next tract is largely the owner's call, limited by whatever restrictions were recorded against it, if any were. If the quiet or the view is part of what you are paying for, ask for the recorded restrictions early, read them beside the title commitment, and assume nothing protects that view unless a recorded document does. ^‡

Planning to build? The county codes office sets the order: a 911 address from the county's 911 center first, then a septic permit bought from the State of Tennessee, and only after that the building, plumbing and mechanical permits. The same office issues permits for the unincorporated county and for Algood, Baxter and Monterey; Cookeville runs its own. TDEC's field office on Foreman Drive in Cookeville is the state office for Putnam. For a land buyer the order boils down to this: no septic permit, no building permit, and a lot whose soil will not take a septic system may never hold a house. Write the contract so it waits on a septic permit, or at least a soil evaluation, before the land becomes yours. ^‡‡‡

A house already sitting on septic and a well needs a different checklist. The state requires a permit even to repair a septic system, and TDEC keeps a public search of septic permit records, so ask the seller for the original permit and look the address up yourself. On the well side, Tennessee requires a license from TDEC's Division of Water Resources for anyone who drills, repairs or services a well, its pump or its treatment system, and a plumber or general contractor without that license may not do the work. If the inspection turns up a tired pump or bad water, have a licensed well contractor price the fix before you agree to a credit with the seller. ^‡‡

Much of the county is limestone, the kind of ground that hollows into caves - Putnam's past includes saltpeter dug out of them. Cookeville studied its sinkholes in 2009 and drew an overlay, but that work stops at the city's growth area, and the county's flood rule looks only at FEMA's maps. Everywhere else, nobody has mapped the hazard for you. Walk the land, ask the seller in writing about any dips, collapses or standing water, and if you plan to build, pay for a site evaluation while the contract's deadlines still give you a way out. ^‡‡‡

Center Hill Lake reaches into the south and southwest of the county, and the Corps of Engineers' shoreline plan for it leans against new private docks. A listing photo of the water is not a dock permit. If a dock is part of why you want the place, put the question to the Corps' lake office before you sign, and ask about that stretch of shore and any permit already on it. ^‡‡

Be sure of the county, too. Several ZIP codes that serve Putnam communities also run into neighboring counties, so a Putnam mailing address is not proof of where the deed will be recorded or who will send the tax bill. Pull the parcel up on the state's assessment site before you sign; it tells you which Register, which Trustee and which set of rules the property answers to. ^{‡‡‡‡‡‡‡}

Then the money. The Trustee mails tax notices in October to whoever owned the property on January 1, and the office says outright that it does not prorate taxes between buyer and seller. The split happens at your closing or not at all, so read the tax clause in the contract and check that the settlement statement carries it out. Farmland brings one more question. Greenbelt does not pass to a new owner on its own: the buyer has to reapply, and if the land stops qualifying, rollback taxes take back the savings for the prior three years on farm and forest land, or five on open space. Settle in the contract who bears that, before anyone's plans for the land change. ^‡‡