Seller

Nope. A title search and a survey are very different things indeed.

A title search is an examination of the county’s deed records to determine a particular property’s legal ownership. Its primary goal is to ensure that a seller can convey good title to the property at closing, or that a borrower has good title to the property pledged as security for a loan. A title search will show ownership as well as any judgments, tax liens, mechanic’s liens, and other items that may have attached to the property. A title search is conducted by a title examiner at the courthouse and involves researching grantor and grantee indexes, lien books, and so on.

A survey, on the other hand, is a visual depiction of a property’s physical boundaries. An as-built survey is a survey that shows all a property’s physical improvements, such as a house or a driveway, in relation to its boundary lines. Surveys are prepared by land surveyors who physically examine the actual land where the property lies.

Unfortunately, no. While it would be wonderful if we could just push a button and that would be that, someone must be physically present at closing to put pen to paper.

Why? Well, deeds have to be notarized to be recorded at the County courthouse, and Georgia’s attestation law requires that all deeds – and any other document requiring a notary – must be signed in a notary’s actual presence. Digital signatures, DocuSign, and the like don’t cut it. While they may be just fine other times, when it comes to closing, they unfortunately just don’t work.

No. Virtual closings are not ethically permissible. Closings must be conducted, and all the documents signed, in a Georgia attorney’s physical presence. Anything else is considered unethical by Georgia’s Supreme Court and State Bar. As the Chair of the Real Property Section of the State Bar said recently: “Our Formal Advisory Opinions also do not currently sanction remote closings.”

If you can’t come to closing it may be possible for everything to be signed by an attorney-in-fact. For sellers and cash buyers, that’s a super easy solution. For borrowers, signing though an attorney-in-fact will require your lender’s approval.

The best option, though is to plan to come to closing.

Unfortunately, no. With the potential for millions of dollars to be changing hands, the risk of wire fraud is high. Our firm’s policy against wiring seller’s proceeds is in place to reduce this risk.

There are very few exceptions to the firm’s policy, and these exceptions are on a case-by-case basis that must be approved by and in the sole discretion of the managing attorney. 

Unfortunately, we can’t simply email closing documents for you to sign in front of a witness and a Notary Public. There are strict ethical requirements on how everything must be executed, and that means a Georgia licensed attorney must be physically present when all the papers are signed. Closings are considered the practice of law here in Georgia, and a lawyer has to be there when ink is put on paper.

So, what documents specifically require the physical presence of an attorney when signed? The Georgia Supreme Court lists a warranty deed, limited warranty deed, quitclaim deed, security deed, or deed to secure debt as all needing to be executed in front of a Georgia lawyer. If any of these are being signed, then it has to happen with a Georgia lawyer. Not only that, but the Court has consistently held that “it is the unauthorized practice of law for someone other than a duly-licensed Georgia attorney to close a real estate transaction or to prepare or facilitate the execution of such deed(s) for the benefit of a seller, borrower, or lender.” That means if a notary is getting a deed signed, they’re engaging in the unauthorized practice of law. That’s bad.

That said, there is an option if you’re not able to come to closing. You can possibly name an attorney-in-fact! If and whenever possible, we’d love to conduct your closing with someone acting as your attorney-in-fact.

Even though we can’t just email documents for you to sign with a notary, we will happily work with you to find a way for your closing to happen as conveniently as possible!

While all closing documents must be signed in front of a Georgia attorney, we understand that sometimes everyone isn’t able to make it to our office to sign a tall stack of papers. Virtual closings are not permitted under Georgia Law, but there is an option if you can’t make it to closing.

Name an attorney-in-fact! Simple! If and whenever possible, we’d love to conduct your closing with someone acting as your attorney-in-fact.

Yes, the wire fee is $45.

Email has been a standard form of communication since the late eighties, and internet-based email has been around as long as Paul’s Boutique by the Beastie Boys, Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, and The Simpsons. Email is quick and efficient. And nowadays, with almost everyone carrying around one model of smartphone or another, email is literally in everyone’s pocket. It’s been around for over thirty years. It’s going nowhere. It’s here to stay.

And for ease of use in sending and receiving documents, email can’t be beat. Sure, there are still fax machines around, but really, who is carrying a fax machine with them in their purse?

So, we’re going to be sending out a lot of email for your closing. We really hope you email us back. And with that in mind, here are some helpful hints:

• Your time is valuable. Think email first! Email is the most efficient way for everyone to communicate. Think about it: If you have a question, how long does it take call, sit on hold, and then wait for an answer? Even though we’re primarily digital, things do take time. That means someone is likely to listen to hold music. Sound like fun? Now compare how long it takes to send an email. We guess you’ll spend much less time dashing off a quick message to us. So, please send email first.

• Use the reply button! If your first thought upon getting an email from us is “well, I should just give them a call about things,” then you should probably reconsider that. By the time you get an email from us, we’ve already moved on. Really. It’s not you, it’s us. We’re sorry. We’re working on a lot of closings at any one time and send out many emails every day. When you use the reply button, you get straight to the point, your message goes directly to the person who emailed you, and there’s a written record of everything to put it all in perspective quickly.

The typical turnaround time for a Savannah area title exam is usually two to four business days. Counties outside the Savannah area generally take longer, as may any property that has significant title issues.

Title orders can be rush ordered and, depending upon the county, the exam may come back the same day.

The closing ceremony, when all of the transfer and loan documents are signed, typically lasts around half an hour to forty-five minutes. Closings rarely exceed an hour. Depending upon the number of documents that need to be signed, and the detail with which the parties wish to review them, the closing may take longer.

Occasionally there may be a problem that must be addressed at the last minute, which might further prolong closing, but this rarely happens.

A good guide is to arrive for closing ten to fifteen minutes early and expect the closing to take around half an hour to forty-five minutes.

Closing costs will differ from property to property. If you’d like an estimate, just request a fee sheet and we’ll send one out to you.

Power of attorney fee is $150

Unfortunately, the question “how quickly can you close” is impossible to answer. Anyone who says differently, to quote the Dread Pirate Roberts, is selling something. How quickly can we close? It all depends.

Why?

Well, here’s the thing. Every property is unique, and the ownership history of every property is different. Even if two properties are physically identical, their titles certainly won’t be, and there is absolutely no way to know beforehand how simple or complicated a property’s title may be. The examiner has to get into the records just to see what those records will look like.

But even if a title is relatively simple, that’s no guarantee that things can happen fast. Say, for example, a property’s title is clean with only one mortgage to pay off. Some lenders will get us a payoff within hours of us requesting it. Fewer lenders will take days. Even fewer will take weeks. Say there’s a clean title with a first and a second mortgage. Same thing. Say there’s a clean title with a first mortgage, a second mortgage, and a homeowners’ association. You guessed it: the same thing.

You see the point. For a closing to happen, there are a lot of individual elements that have to come together. All of them take time, and it is impossible to predict how much time any particular one will take for any particular property. Again, anyone who says differently is selling something.

That doesn’t mean we can’t make generalizations, though. For Savannah properties, title exams typically come back in two to four business days. Mortgage payoffs also typically come back in two to four business days. So, if the stars align in the sky, then things can happen in just days. We’ve handled many closings that have taken less than a week from start to finish. But we’ve also handled closings that have taken much longer.

The plain truth is that any individual closing will take the time it takes, but we’ll always work hard to get things done as quickly as possible for you.

So you sold your house and property taxes are still in your name? Did you get the actual bill and wonder if you should pay it? Well, no need to worry! This is perfectly normal, and everything is just fine.

Here’s the thing, the property tax bills weren’t available when you sold your house. If they were, they would have been collected for and paid at closing. But when you sold your house, they weren’t out. And since most tax offices don’t release the yearly bills until autumn, this happens for most closings.

That’s why there are prorations. If you look at your settlement statement, you should see a credit from the you to buyer; and this represents your portion of the taxes. Everybody’s responsible for their part of the taxes, after all!

When the bill finally does come out, the buyer is responsible for paying the entire amount that’s owed. If you actually received the bill, all you need to do is forward it on to the buyer.

So why would the bill still be in your name, even though you sold the house? That’s just how the tax offices work, honestly. Property tax bills are always sent with the name of whomever owned the property on January first of that year. If you sell your house before the bills come out, the bill will still be issued in your name, and the tax office won’t update their records until the next year. No worries!

Prorations are the adjustment of property taxes between the buyer and seller at the time of closing, ensuring that each are responsible for their fair share of the property taxes. Prorations are based on the number of days each owns the property during the tax year and appear as a separate line item on the settlement statement.

If a tax bill is already out, then its proration will be based on the actual amount owed and will be shown as a credit from the buyer to the seller. Essentially the seller is paying the property tax for the entire year and the buyer is crediting their portion to the seller.

If a tax bill is not out, then the proration will be based on an estimated tax amount. Typically, that’s just the previous year’s amount. Then there’s a credit from the seller to the buyer for their portion. When the tax bill finally does come out, the buyer is responsible for the full bill.

Overall, tax prorations are a beneficial aspect of real estate transactions that help to ensure fairness, clarity, and simplicity for both the buyer and the seller.

You should bring two forms of identification, including at least one valid government-issued ID such as a passport or a driver’s license.

A lis pendens is a notice filed in the deed records at the courthouse that a lawsuit has been filed challenging a property’s ownership. It normally gives notice of the suit as well as the parties and the court in which the suit has been filed. If a lis pendens is filed, the ownership of the property depends upon the lawsuit’s outcome, and consequently, it’s considered a cloud on title.

If a title search reveals a lis pendens, then we cannot close until the suit is resolved or the lis pendens is released.

A Mail-away Closing is one in which one or more of the parties is most often, though not necessarily, out-of-state and asks if closing documents can be emailed to them to be executed in front of a notary or other signing service. Unfortunately, the ethical permissibility of these types of closings is suspect at best and we can’t use mobile notary or similar services for closings. As a recent Chair of the Real Property Section of the State Bar said: “our Formal Advisory Opinions also do not currently sanction remote closings.”
Georgia is an attorney state, and real estate closings are considered the practice of law. Consequently, closings must be conducted, and all the documents signed, in a Georgia lawyer’s presence.

In fact, both the Georgia State Bar and Supreme Court have consistently said that a Georgia attorney must be physically present at closing:

A lawyer cannot delegate to a nonlawyer the responsibility to “close” the real estate transaction without the participation of an attorney. Formal Advisory Opinion No. 86-5 also provides that “Supervision of the work of the paralegal by the attorney must be direct and constant to avoid any charges of aiding the unauthorized practice of law.” The lawyer’s physical presence at a closing will assure that there is supervision of the work of the paralegal which is direct and constant. Supreme Court of Georgia, Formal Advisory Opinion 00-3. (Emphasis added).

The Supreme Court of Georgia additionally wrote:

…We have issued formal advisory opinions which confirmed that a lawyer cannot delegate responsibility for the closing of a real estate transaction to a non-lawyer and required the physical presence of an attorney for the preparation and execution of a deed of conveyance (including, but not limited to, a warranty deed, limited warranty deed, quitclaim deed, security deed, and deed to secure debt). Supreme Court of Georgia, In Re: UPL Advisory Opinion 2003-2. (Emphasis added).

The Ethics Committee of the Real Property Section of the State Bar of Georgia also states that an attorney must

“attend the closing of the transaction. An attorney must be physically present at the closing of a transaction and may not telephonically supervise a nonlawyer officiating at the closing.” Ethics Committee of the State Bar of Georgia, Residential Real Estate Closing Procedure Handbook. (Emphasis added).

Not only is an Georgia lawyer’s presence required when closing documents are signed, the Georgia Supreme Court approved an advisory opinion by the Georgia State Bar’s Standing Committee on the Unlicensed Practice of Law that found that the preparation and execution of a deed of conveyance by a non-lawyer represented the unauthorized practice of law:

We have consistently held that it is the unauthorized practice of law for someone other than a duly-licensed Georgia attorney to close a real estate transaction or to prepare or facilitate the execution of such deed(s) for the benefit of a seller, borrower, or lender.  Supreme Court of Georgia, In Re: UPL Advisory Opinion 2003-2. (Emphasis added).

This position is shared by the Real Property Section, which maintains that remote notary closings “encourage the unauthorized practice of law.”

Ultimately, at the least, an attorney would not be satisfying his or her ethical obligations by merely sending closing documents to be signed in front of a mobile notary or other similar service. At the worst, an attorney could be seen as aiding the unauthorized practice of law by doing so. There’s unfortunately no way around it: Closing documents simply must be signed in a Georgia lawyer’s presence.

With modern communication technology like Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet and other video conferencing services, this ethics rule may seem a bit outdated. We sure think so, anyway. And with that in mind, the Real Property Law Section of the State Bar recently asked the Georgia Supreme Court to reconsider their ruling requiring a lawyer’s physical presence when the closing documents are signed. The Supreme Court declined to do so.

So where does that leave someone who isn’t able to come to closing? Unfortunately, there are few options. One is to find a licensed Georgia lawyer who is willing to oversee the execution of the closing documents. This is likely to be both difficult and prohibitively expensive. After all, there’s an additional set of attorney’s fees to be paid.

The second option is to appoint an attorney-in-fact who will attend closing and sign all of the closing documents. Using an attorney-in-fact for closing can be super easy. Please contact our office as soon as possible if you need to close using an attorney-in-fact.

Or, the simplest solution of all is to make sure everyone can attend closing.

Closings disburse as soon as we have collected funds in our IOLTA account and any needed lender’s authorization to fund. Ordinarily this happens shortly after closing, but sometimes may take several hours; and closings that occur late in the afternoon may not fund until the next morning. But don’t worry! We know your money is important to you, and we work as hard as possible to get your funds to you as quickly as possible!

Why can things be delayed?

• Wires come in after hours. Unfortunately, wires are not instantaneous transfers from one bank to another. Sometimes wires take a few hours to wind through the federal system. Sometimes banks group wires together and release them in giant batches throughout the day. Sometimes wires get held for quality control and anti-fraud checks. Without all the funds in hand, we can’t disburse.
• Lender approval may slow disbursing. If your buyer is getting a loan, there’s a good chance their bank is going to want to review the signed documents from closing before they authorize us to write checks. By good chance, we mean that it is almost universal practice. Some banks are quick and require very few closing documents. Others aren’t.

For more information, please feel free to contact our office.

There are a number of reasons why the payoff balance may be higher than the amount shown on your monthly statement.

The most-common reason is that your monthly statement only shows the principal balance that’s currently owed, and does not include the additional interest accruing every day. Many times, this interest accounts for the difference between your statement balance and the final loan payoff. There are, also, other factors that can affect your payoff: there may be a shortage in an escrow account, there may be owed late fees or other lender charges, or there may be a prepayment penalty associated with your mortgage.

We always obtain a written payoff statement from your mortgage company, and will happily give you a copy if you want one.