Do title companies charge a fee?
Yes. In Tennessee a title company charges a settlement fee for closing the transaction, usually $500 to $900, plus the cost of the title search and the title insurance premium. The premium comes from the underwriter's filed rate, so no office can mark it up. All of it shows up on your settlement statement.
What the fee doesn't buy you is a lawyer. A title company can't give you legal advice, and if it has an attorney on staff, that attorney doesn't represent you. Vanderpool Law closes for the same fee a title company charges, and because we're a law firm, Vanderpool Law reads your contract before you sign and sits on your side of the table at closing.
A title company is barred by law from advising you. A repair the seller agreed to and didn't do. An escrow agreement that has to be written so the closing can go forward anyway. A fight over who keeps the earnest money. A demand the other side makes the day before closing that isn't anywhere in the contract. None of that is title work, and a title company is prohibited by statute from telling you what to do about any of it. At Vanderpool Law, we handle it, because handling it for you is the job.
Tenn. Code Ann. § 23-3-103 (no corporation or association may practice law or do law business) and § 23-3-101 ("law business" includes advising or counseling any person as to the law for a fee); Tenn. Sup. Ct. R. 8, RPC 1.13 (a lawyer employed by a company represents the company).The fee is the same. The job isn't.
Every closing has the same line items: a settlement fee for the work of closing, a search of the public record, the title insurance premium, and recording. A title company charges them and so do we, and ours are not higher. Where the two part ways is in what you get for the money.
So the honest answer to "do title companies charge a fee" is yes, and the better question is what the fee should buy. For the same money, Vanderpool Law reads your contract, before you sign or after, searches the title before you are committed, and is the one at the table working for you. Tennessee lets you choose who closes and, in the same breath, forbids a title company from advising you; we call that the Tennessee Paradox, and it has its own page.
See what your contract means to you before you write anyone's name on the settlement line. Send it now, see the results, and talk it over with Jim Vanderpool. Complimentary.