Know Your Fees When Selling Your Home: Title Insurance

There are many great Boca Raton and Palm Beach County homes for sale. Click here to perform a full home search, or if you're thinking of selling your home, click here for a FREE Home Price Evaluation so you know what buyers will pay for your home in today's market. You may also call us at (561) 395-8418 for a FREE home buying or selling consultation to answer any of your real estate questions.

Today, Palm Beach Premier's favorite attorney, James Brown, addresses some of the fees you have to pay when you sell your home. Title insurance is necessary after selling your home and there is a contract that needs to be signed, the FAR/BAR. This contract stipulates who, between the buyer and seller, is responsible to pay for title insurance. There is no law in the books, but it's customary in Palm Beach County that the seller pays the title insurance.

The problem people run into is the seller is generating the title insurance and all its related searches, but the buyer is the party who is exposed to the transaction; they buyer is the one that typically wants to see the outcome of those searches. When the seller pays for title insurance, the buyer doesn't have the right to see it until after closing, or, in some cases, aren't allowed to see it at all.

The buyer can benefit dramatically from paying for title insurance. It can be structured so that it's no additional cost to the buyer and no additional burden for the seller. In this case, the seller would not be missing out on any of the money they'd get throughout the normal course of the sale. When the buyer pays for title insurance, they can look at search reports and municipal lead searches, which have things like open permit searches and code violations - essentially, all the things that may not have incurred in the sale that the seller knew about. Because it's technically the seller's contract, the buyer may not be made aware of certain important things that could be costly down the road.

That's why it's important to work with an attorney when title insurance is being discussed. If you are a buyer, you don't want to find out that your new home lacks certain permits the seller neglected to inform you about. What often happens is somebody buys a property and the seller buys the title insurance. A few months later, when the buyer tries to do something simple, like hang some gutters, they find out there is a permit that was never closed out from the prior owner. In this case, the buyer is responsible for closing out the permit. This might require hiring a contractor or an engineer - which could cost you anywhere from several hundred to several thousand dollars. James once saw a homeowner that had to tear down an entire addition because it was erected without a permit.

In order to avoid these kind of problems, give us a call. We'd be happy to put you in touch with James, and make sure you are protected during the title insurance process. 

How we helped Robert sell his home by always being responsive.

"They were very forthcoming and responsive when I asked questions. They always let me know what was going on and kept me up to date. They responded quickly to any doubts or questions I had during the whole process and I thought it was consistently excellent service!"

-Robert Schulte, Home Seller

The Advantages of Using an Attorney for a Short Sale

There are many great Boca Raton and Palm Beach County homes for sale. Click here to perform a full home search, or if you're thinking of selling your home, click here for a FREE Home Price Evaluation so you know what buyers will pay for your home in today's market. You may also call us at (561) 395-8418 for a FREE home buying or selling consultation to answer any of your real estate questions.

A short sale can be a complicated and frustrating process. We at Palm Beach Premier Real Estate want to take some of the pressure off, so we're here to explain why hiring an attorney will be beneficial to you.

An attorney offers multiple avenues of relief. Jim Brown, a favorite attorney of ours, says his goal is the elimination of liability for the borrower - and his team has access to multiple tools that can make that happen. If someone is receiving a commission or a negotiation fee for the sale of your home, an attorney will work to ensure you're not liable. A deficiency is the release of any liability after the sale; an attorney will ensure a lender doesn't come after you looking to collect balances on the loan.

Lawyers have tools that are not available to non-lawyers to eliminate that deficiency. They can also defend a foreclosure using defects in the foreclose as a litigation tool against the lender in the short sale.

A handful of things can complicate the short sale process. Most frequently, a bank will change servicing in the middle of negotiations. Without an attorney, the whole negotiation process will have to start from scratch if that happens. Attorneys have the contacts in place at different servicing entities, so they can get the file going again instead of having to start from scratch.

As banks and lenders become more solvent, they look to get more out of short sales. This makes them tougher to negotiate, and makes having a lawyer on your side that much more important. From an administrative perspective, short sales are becoming shorter in duration and relatively easy to tell what the outcomes will be; however, they're becoming more financially difficult for the seller and have become tougher for buyers, because banks want more money due to rising property values. A lawyer can protect you from some of the aggressive tactics at play during this process

In short, a lawyer will save you a lot of time and frustration during the short sale process, which has become increasingly hard to navigate. If you are in the position to have a short sale or are currently in the process and would like some help, give us a call or shoot us an email. We can put you in contact with Jim, whose experience with short sales will be a great help to you!