Sharing a well

Never bought/sold in one of those states a personal residence so was not aware of that. Still less than half the states and a lot of the high-population ones aren't included so overall percentage I suspect is still pretty low.

And, currently live in one of the listed states and the college Foundation sold two donated properties within the last year and while we did engage an attorney to ensure we were protected, we could have completed the transaction without that step and never saw a thing in any of the documents from the realtor that indicated any such thing/requirement.

These were commercial properties and the Foundation is a nonprofit corporation so maybe the statute doesn't apply as they figured those folks should know enough to look out for themselves, that I dunno, either.

I am in North Carolina. A lawyer told me that even if one pays cash for real estate a lawyer is needed to file the papers at the court house.

I don't know if they need to be at the closing or not.

There is some funny quirk of the law in NC. I don't know what exectally,but one house I sold the lawyer could not give me a check for it that day. It was late in the day and he needed to get to the court house to register the deed. Without that , he would not give me check, so I had to come back to his ofice the next day and his office help just handed me the check . That was a house that I sold myself without a real estate agent. The lawyer handled all the paper work.

IDK if your source is totally full of baloney, but they are with regards to NJ. No lawyer is required, but most people here do use one.

No lawyer is required in ND and very few residential real estate transfers use one.

Thanks to the Walkerton fiasco

People need to remember, whatever one lawyer says, another one will argue with him until both parties are broke or someone gives up.

I have done it both ways. This house and my condo were done by the broker. They were both pretty simple "as is" transactions with clean titles. The business we sold was with a lawyer. Too many potential pit falls there. The contract was about 20 pages with every contingency, asset and liability covered.

That must be a law in Maryland since 1971. My house there was done pretty informally by a broker who worked for the builder. There was no sales agent, I found them. I did get a lawyer involved over the final closing that was hung up on financing. I already was living in the house and the builder's financing deal fell through but it was still in the contract those morons wrote. My lawyer said I could live there forever for free if they couldn't come up with the financing they promised me. In the end I found my own financing for 0.25% more and I had them knock a couple grand off the house to get me to sign. The added interest over 20 years was far less than that. (<$600) They couldn't figure that out either.

Haha.

When I bought this house, I got a recommendation and hired a lawyer. I think he offered me a fixed price, and I didn't quibble.

IIRC he came to the closing and a few days later, the thought occurred to me, What about title insurance! I called him and he said I didn't need it, because the land had just been subdivided? Huh. That might have made clear title a little simpler?????, but it certainly didn't make the boundaries to my 6-sided lot clear at all. There's a plat, but how do I know the house was built according to it?

I admit, to the extent I thought about it, I thought the cost of title insurance was included in the price the lawyer gave me. Maybe that doesn't make sense.

What had happened was, I was moving from NY and I wanted a house to move into. Found one, applied for a mortgage, guy wanted me to start work before I closed on the house, so I got my new boss to say I was starting

Fortunately I have a loving brother and I called him and borrowed 50,000 dollars. No problem with that but when I wanted him to send it express mail, even though I was to pay it, he objected to the cost. He said, What will they do if you don't have the check? Sell it to someone else, I said. So he mailed it Express mail.

Come the closing, because no mortgage company is present, there is no one asking for title insurance. Including my lawyer.

Anoher interesting thing, I think they said not to bring a personal check. I don't know what he shoudl have sent, but he sent a check from his account at the Dreyfus Fund. While my brother did have the money in it, it's really just a personal check and can be written for money when there is none. Nonetheless, they signed the deed etc. with no mention of this. If the check had bounced, I would have still have owned the house, right?

By this time, interest rates had gone down so I got a mortgage somewhere else, for less, got title insurance, and repaid my brother.

The guy who recommended the lawyer lives in an upper-middle income n'hood, but the lawyer's office was a working or even lower income n'hood. Should that have made me wary?

That's a good example of why I said that going to a lawyer for advice on the well probably isn't worth it. Your lawyer doesn't even understand title insurance, forget about wells, which I'd bet 99% of lawyers have never had come up.

Title insurance and any other costs like that are not typically included in the lawyer's fee, which is for his services only. Most charge extra for FedEx, etc too. I even saw an unscrupulous shyster lawyer quote a price of like $1000 for a closing and then only at the end try to tack on several hundred more for hourly fees for her paralegal. That was a friend's deal, I told him to tell her he's not paying it, I don't think he did.

IDK, good question. I'd say if it was cleared up quickly, within a few days, then probably yes, you did own it for the intervening period. But if not, then no, because it was fraud and never a legitimate transaction.

True. One downside to going to a lawyer, who's going to go that route to basically do a favor for the other property owner, who bought a property with no well? You could go through paying a lawyer $1000+ to research it, write up an agreement and then the guy with the shed says, never mind, I decided I don't like the agreement, I won't pay $50 a month, I don't want a well. Which is why I would either tell the guy I'm not providing water or else do it month to month or quarterly, with no agreement. If at some point it goes south, the neighbor is the one that's going to have to either drill a well or start spending money on a lawyer, where it's unlikely he's going to prevail. Given that choice the other guy is highly likely to do without a well or drill one. And if you decide to hire a lawyer to draft an agreement, then the shed guy should pay that cost upfront. I guess the property owner could go to a lawyer that offers a free consultation, get a price for drafting an agreement, then tell the shed guy he has to pay that upfront before you proceed. But like I said, I see big problems with any agreement, starting with I don't see a way to a clear agreement without installing a meter to measure the water usage. And then the shed guy some day could start using a lot more water, claim that you're hosing him, the meter isn't right, etc, etc, etc. With my no agreement approach, if it goes south, you just tell the guy to get lost.

I forgot something I learned a year later. The whole neighborhood, which is 5 or 6-sided, not counthing the stream, was misunderstood or mis-surveyed or something. Either we or the adjoining n'hood was using some of the other party's land. They had to give us some land they weren't using, or vice versa, to even things out. I would say straighten things out, but I don't if it was better the way it had been envioused.

I didn't go back to the guy who recommended the lawyer. I was from out of town and knew only one or two people to ask. I don't think others ask this guy for a recommendation, because local people have more and better sources. I think they were just personal friends and I didn't want to insult his friend to him.

If a buyer is already seeing a real estate lawyer for the property purchase - getting a water agreement is pretty easy. Any Real Estate Lawyer working with rural properties will be no stranger to shared wells and water agreements. Using Mickey's < or anyone's > experiences with a very bad lawyer - is not a good arguement against all lawyers.

Title Insurance is another different kettle of rancid fish. John T.

The realtor might not push it because he doesn't give a darn. And he'd probably have fewer people there to put a monkey wrench in the sale, for fear of losing his fee. Or just because things go quicker when fewer people are there.

But I'll bet there is a statute for non-profit foundations that requires a lawyer. Since you had one, no one complained, then or later.

On the contrary, laws regulating non-profit foundations are usually stricter then for individuals or corporations, who at baseline are entitled to act foolishly if they want to. Foudations are basically using other people's money entrusted to them, not to be wasted.

Did you have a proper survey for your property ? .. or a useless " subdivision plan " ? This is the sort of detail that a decent lawyer will address. John T.

You should not need title insurance as you pay a lawyer to do the work. However if he messes up, it does not come back on him to make things right and you are left holding the bag. Therefore in many cases title insurance is often needed.

Doctors and lawyers have it made. Anything happens and hard for anything to come back on them.

I did not get the land surveyed when I bought this house on 3 acres. It is sort of on a corner. There is a creek behind the house that defines the back and one side. The other is a road,so that just leaves about

Usually sold to you by a lazy or unscrupulous realtor to cover their hiney - or by the same kind of lawyer for the same reason. Absolutely NO excuse for title insurance on a fresh deed.

On 4/11/2020 9:02 AM, micky wrote: ...

The UPMIFA is a wholly different area of law than being discussed here...and I am quite familiar with it.

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... ...previous more recent attributions already snipped...

Will almost universally be required to purchase lender's title insurance to get a mortgage -- that covers them if something goes south later. Many states require the seller to pick up the fee there.

Buyer's title insurance to cover you if that same event were to occur is your nickel.

Like all insurance, it's only worth it when you need it.

How likely it is is totally dependent upon past history of the property and how thorough the abstract search is. You can decide on how comfortable you are. Age of the current deed is of little matter in general; it's the past history of some misdeed, unpaid lien, etc., etc., that is the possible problem.

The lawyer for the Foundation in the story I told above re: sale of two commercial donated properties earned his keep by finding an unrecorded/cleared paid lien on one of the two properties. The abstract company had missed it entirely even though OK is one of the states that requires a complete abstract from the beginning for every transaction.

While the piece of property had a history of only about 60 years from the time it was subdivided out of previous farm ground, it had had a very colorful history including divorces, failed businesses, reversions of title for breaches of contract, etc., etc., etc., ... Do without and "you just never know" what may have gone on in the past.

Given the location, the relative newness of the subdivision in a small OK town, I would have never suspected such.