Is this an East cost thing to hire a lawyer when buying a house? I have purchased two houses one in New Mexico and one in California without a lawyer. Nobody I personally know in either state has used a lawyer when buying houses. What is the lawyer doing for you in these transactions?
Mr. Athena and I started using a lawyer when we buy houses after the first time the potential sellers tried to both sell a house out from under us AND keep our good faith money. A letter from a lawyer quickly straightened it out. If we’d had the lawyer look over the paperwork before we signed the contract, the issue would have never happened.
Ever since then, we use a real estate lawyer to look over everything before we sign. It only costs a couple hundred bucks, and it’s well worth it.
Buying and selling houses in Australia, I’ve used lawyers. Buying a house in Ohio, I just used a buyer’s agent for all the techical aspects, including the closing.
When I bought a house in Massachusetts (2002), the bank gave (and charged us for) a lawyer to take care of the paperwork and hold the closing but we didn’t have a lawyer that we consulted with about anything. The real estate agent and the bank worked it all out.
According to some facts that I recently made up, you don’t HAVE to have a lawyer to purchase a house, but you’d be an idiot not to.
Real Estate Person Checking In: You don’t NEED a lawyer, but it’s always better to HAVE one. In my state we have to get a notarized statement from anyone who is not using an attorney that they understand it’s better to have an attorney.
Buying a house is a legal transaction, and also the most expensive item in your life. Attorneys are a good idea in that case.
Buying anything is a legal transaction. Why does a house need a lawyer? What is the lawyer doing for you? All the paperwork at least in NM and CA is the same boiler plate paper work with the names and addresses filled in for this particular sale. It seems to me this is just an excuse for another person to take a cut of the house.
It’s a state by state thing. My dad’s currently selling/buying in NY State, and he’s got all sorts of legal things going on that I’ve never heard of up here in VT.
I think it’s cheap insurance. You’re going to spend hundreds of thousand, why not spend a tiny fraction of that to help avoid problems. I think many buyers forget that the real estate broker represents the seller and is acting on behalf of the seller. If you do hire an atty. you must understand exactly what they’re responsible for. I would think you’d want a lawyer who has experience in real estate, rather than just someone to go over the contract language.
Yes but when you are buying a TV or anything else it doesn’t cost $400,000. The lawyer doesn’t take a cut. In my experience it is a flat fee depending on how much time they have to put in. I think it cost about $400 for the selling one house and buying another. Both of the other parties that we dealt with tried to pull shenanigans after the closing and having a lawyer on our side helped a lot. I would sooner shoot myself in the foot than not have a lawyer involved.
It always made me feel better knowing that during the closing, there was one person 100% on my side, ensuring the contracts were correct, ensuring I paid the right amount to each person, ensuring I was not going to have legal trouble down the road with deeds or titles or setbacks or whatever, and having the knowledge and experience to get the job done. That was my lawyer.
My RE agent, as nice a girl as she was, gets paid if the deal goes through, she has no incentive to tank the deal if something is wrong. My lawyer gets paid either way, and got paid about 1/5th what the agent did, when all is said and done.
Cheap insurance, indeed. You may not have the same issues in your state as we do in NY/NJ, but here, most people use lawyers to negotiate the pitfalls.
Sorry for the second post.
Also there was about 5 inches of forms to fill out. The lawyer had all of them filled out properly. All I had to do was sign about 300 times. I don’t know how long it would have taken me to do it myself but it would have been a real pain and I probably would have made mistakes. For the paperwork alone it was worth the price. So in the spirit of GQ, no it is not necessary to have a lawyer, it’s just a good idea.
In California, it’s generally not needed to have a real estate attorney, unless you’re getting into complicated things like TIC or tenancy in common, any property such as a condo or newer planned communities involving CC&Rs (conditions, covenants and restrictions) or commercial properties.
For a basic detached, single-family home, your Realtor (eg: buyer’s agent) is more often than not, more than qualified to handle the entire transaction.
Because the boiler plate can suck. Also, not all boiler plates are the same. Each real estate agent/mortgage provider uses their own. Do you know enough about real estate law to evaluate if your boiler plate protects you more than it protects the other guys involved in the deal? I don’t.
I don’t trust boiler plates anymore. That’s what got me into the previous real estate mess that made me realize that the $200 spent on a lawyer is the most important money spent when buying a house.