Closing Attorney & Title Services in Smyrna, TN

Maybe you saw the house on a Saturday and signed on Sunday, or maybe the agent's draft is still waiting in your email. Either way, the purchase agreement is a statewide form, and it knows nothing about this particular address: whether the town actually reaches it, whether a creek behind it shows up on a federal flood map, whether the airport's height rules cover it. Those are the questions worth answering first in Smyrna, and every one of them is cheaper to answer before your signature than after it. Buying your first home? The road from offer to keys →

Begin with the envelope. 37167 is the Smyrna mailing ZIP, but when the Census Bureau laid ZIP areas over town boundaries in 2020, much of the 37167 ZIP lay outside the town - nearly all of that in unincorporated Rutherford County, with a sliver in La Vergne. Which side of the line the house is on decides who taxes it, whose zoning rules it and who runs the pipes. Inside the town, Smyrna Utilities provides water, sewer and natural gas, and the town's 2021 plan says its water lines stay mostly within the town limits; outside, the water may come from the Consolidated Utility District of Rutherford County. Middle Tennessee Electric counts Smyrna among the places it serves. So do not take the mailing address at its word. Before you sign, have the parcel's tax record and each utility provider confirmed, and ask the seller for a recent bill from every one of them. ^{‡‡‡‡‡} Buying your first home? The road from offer to keys →

Then look behind the house. The town's comprehensive plan, adopted in December 2021, lists West Fork Stones River, Stewarts Creek and Harts Branch as streams that FEMA's flood insurance rate maps show with flooding hazards inside Smyrna, and it says stretches of Sam Ridley Parkway, Rock Springs Road and Mapleview are subject to flooding. That matters to the offer, not just to the yard: if the house is in a zone whose name starts with A and the loan is federally backed, the lender will make flood insurance a condition. Type the address into FEMA's Flood Map Service Center and get a premium quote before you settle on a price, because once the appraisal is in, that number has nowhere to go but your monthly payment. And if you plan to build, or to bring in fill, on floodplain ground, the town's Floodplain Administrator has to issue a development permit first. ^‡‡‡

Living near Smyrna Airport is about more than the sound of the planes. The field covers more than 1,700 acres and calls itself the busiest general aviation airport in Tennessee, and the Smyrna/Rutherford County Airport Height Zoning Ordinance, carried in the town's zoning ordinance, limits how tall buildings and even trees may grow inside its zones. It also forbids uses that create glare, lights a pilot could mistake, or a bird-strike hazard, and it points to avigation easements on record in Deed Book 208, Page 145. Buying close to the field? Go through the exceptions in the title commitment one at a time, and before you count on a second story, a tall antenna or a screen of trees, find out whether a height limit says otherwise. ^‡‡

A brand-new house, or a resale with a bonus room someone finished later, raises a different question: was the work permitted? The town's Building Safety Department issues a Certificate of Occupancy only after a new structure passes inspection. It wants a site plan and a permit for a deck, porch, garage, pool or addition, and it inspects before an attic or garage is turned into living space. On new construction, ask for the Certificate of Occupancy, and ask whether a Notice of Completion has been recorded - Tennessee uses that notice to shorten the time contractors and suppliers have to claim a lien. On a resale, ask whether the converted garage or the bonus room had a permit. If it did not, you pay for the room now, and you answer for it later, when your own buyer asks you the same thing. ^‡‡ What title insurance covers, and what it does not →

Selling? There is one Smyrna item worth clearing early. The town files property maintenance liens, and they are paid through the Rutherford County Trustee - but paying is only half of it. After payment, the owner has to contact the town to arrange the release, and the town itself warns that otherwise the lien may not be timely and properly released. A lien still showing on the record at closing is your buyer's problem until it becomes yours. If you know of one, or even suspect one, tell Vanderpool Law when you list, so the payoff and the release are both done before anyone sits down at the table. ^‡

When the papers are signed, the deed goes to Murfreesboro, the county seat. The Rutherford County Register of Deeds, Heather Dawbarn, records it at 319 North Maple Street and collects the state transfer tax - 37 cents per 100 dollars of the price or the value, whichever is higher - and the mortgage tax on a new loan, 11.5 cents per 100 dollars, with the first 2,000 dollars of the loan exempt. The Register's own site is blunt that the office does not do title searches: it records what it is handed and does not vouch that the title is clean. That checking is somebody else's job, and on your closing it should be your own lawyer's. The site also points owners to an alert service that flags new filings against their name. The office accepts electronic recording but publishes no turnaround time, so take any promised recording date as an estimate. ^‡‡‡ Who pays which closing costs in Tennessee → Who pays for title insurance →