A real estate attorney is the only member of your home-buying team qualified to give you legal advice. If you hire a real estate lawyer before you sign a purchase contract, you'll be making sure that your home-buying experience goes as smoothly as possible and that potential problems are resolved before closing. Why risk using a title agency and hoping no legal problems arise?
Your Florida real estate lawyer can advise you on important issues pertaining to your real estate transaction, including:
- Income and estate tax consequences
- Florida property taxes, zoning or special assessments
- Probate issues
- How to simplify a future sale
- The accuracy of the property's recorded legal description
- Your legal rights for use of the property
- The marketability of the title to the property should you later decide to sell or refinance
Financial value plus with a Florida real estate attorney
If your Florida real estate lawyer handles your title insurance, his or her services will cost about the same as those of a non-lawyer title agency. The real difference will be in the additional services that a lawyer can provide and a title agency can’t, including:
- Resolving title or inspection issues
- Giving you legal advice throughout the transaction
To find a real estate attorney in your area, visit our Find an Attorney in Your Area page.
The earlier in the process you involve a real estate lawyer the more value you gain. Have a lawyer prepare your purchase contract, for instance. You can be more confident at each step in the process with an attorney on your side, because the attorney has an ethical obligation to work in your best interest.
Your real estate attorney will be well versed in Florida real estate law and will either personally perform or make sure the following procedures are completed in a timely, professional manner:
- Review the contract and ensure that all provisions and contingencies are in your best interest
- Inform you of your legal rights and obligations
- Obtain a title search, evaluate the status of the title and require appropriate legal remedies to clear any defects
- Advise you on what the title policy does not protect against, emphasizing marketability of the title when you sell
- Prepare or review the closing statement and other closing documents, and let you know how any seller contingencies will affect your interests
- Interpret and advise you on all legal documents related to the title and transaction, including deeds, mortgages and closing statements
- Advise you on how you should take the title to the home, and how this might affect your overall business and personal estate
- Prepare a bill of sale to cover any personal property that you and the seller agree shall remain in the home
- Inform you about the income, estate, and gift tax consequences to your estate