The roles of a real estate attorney in real estate transactions must not be underrated. Especially when it comes to understanding the importance of legal representation in property deals from contract review to negotiation and closing it.
The real estate market can prove to be very complicated, with a vast catalogue of interwoven laws, policies, and regulations that can seriously impact the buying and selling process within the sector. When one is buying or selling a landed property, which is peculiar to any type of merchandise, one is sure to be faced with some difficulties that might arise from the legalities involved in the negotiation process.
To this end, the importance of having a highly experienced real estate attorney is very essential for a successful real estate transaction. Ranging from finding and marketing properties, conducting market research, to evaluating negotiation contracts, employing the services of a real estate attorney to monitor your interests will be advantageous in scaling through and navigating the potential challenges that might arise.
Hence, to clarify this issue further, in this article, we will discuss the roles of a real estate attorney and how they can use their expertise in real estate laws and contracts to your advantage at any stage of a real estate transaction.
But before we go into the roles of a real estate attorney, let’s start by understanding first who a real estate attorney is and how he is different from other legal representatives.
Who is a real estate attorney?
A real estate attorney is a legal representative whose area of specialty is within the various legal concepts and aspects of real estate management. Their main function is usually to provide legal counsel and guidance services to individuals and business organisations alike who are actively involved in the real estate business.
This means that they ensure that landed property transactions, which might include the buying, selling, or leasing of properties, are handled smoothly in a way that complies with the laws and policies of the land.
They perform this duty by negotiating terms, reviewing title contracts, and evaluating complex real estate market laws and regulations. In addition to the above, they also handle matters about property disputes, land zoning, and other issues of property use and rights.
Research has shown that with the uprising of the real estate sector within the country, estimated at a surging volume of up to 4.9 million real estate unit sales, the role real estate attorneys play is a crucial one, as they help to actively protect both the financial interests and legal rights of real estate shareholders. Their services are particularly invaluable in these recent times that fraudulent and dubious activities have plagued the Nigerian real estate market, making one easily susceptible to financial risk.
The Roles of a Real Estate Attorney in Real Estate Transactions
In many real estate transactions, real estate attorneys play vital roles in ensuring the legality of the whole transactional set-up. They ensure the whole process is legally sound and maintains the interests of the client whilst within the working context of modern property laws and policies.
Based on the aforementioned, we can now streamline the various roles estate attorneys play as;
1. Understanding property law via legal expertise
This is one of the major rolaes of a real estate attorney. Property law is a specialized field that covers the rules, policies, and regulations that govern the use and ownership of real estate properties, i.e., lands and buildings.
Property law is a complex field with highly technical law concepts that might be difficult for everyone to understand at first glance without prior teachings and expertise. Hence, the need for real estate attorneys who have a deep knowledge of these laws to ensure that the legalities of real estate transactions are highlighted and conform to.
Real estate attorneys can be consulted to provide helpful legal guidance that would best improve the transaction process. This will help to ensure that all legal requirements are strictly adhered to, ensuring that a shareholder crosses their Ts and dots their Is.
Highly technical areas of real estate transactions, such as terms of contracts, complex contract interpretation and even simple advice on the best course of action can be significantly improved by soughting the expertise of experienced real estate attorneys.
In addition, issues that might arise from common misunderstandings or violations of property laws can be appropriately avoided by consulting the expertise of real estate attorneys ensuring that your interests are protected and keeping you rest assured that you are in line with the law.
2. Document Preparation and Review
Another important role required of a proficient real estate attorney is the ability to draft and prepare legal documents required for real estate property transactions. These documents include land purchase contracts, invoice statements, deeds, mortgage statements, loan documents etc.
Real estate attorneys use these documents to provide a detailed representation of the transaction or contractual agreement between the parties involved usually the buyer and seller.
A good attorney must ensure to review the drafted documents and ensure that its contents include the agreed terms between both parties and that they meet the required legal constraints of the law whilst protecting the interests of their client.
Complex legal jargons and clauses that are contained in the document must be meticulously explained and simplified to the clients, ensuring that they are actively knowledgeable of all clearly defined terms and conditions. This will also keep the clients informed and responsible for what their obligations are before appending any signature on the documents.
So in summary, real estate attorney are tasked with the role of preparing documents and ensuring that these documents are legal, accurate and comply with the client demands. Without the expertise of an estate attorney, ignorant parties (either in the case of buyer or seller) could unknowingly agree to unfavourable terms which might lead to eventual legal disputes or financial drain which would have been avoidable with the services of a real estate attorney.
3. Conduct Proper Title Search
Before paying for any merchandise, it is only logical to ascertain the ownership of the said product incase of theft or any other fraudulent practice. In the world of real estate, there is no difference, as conducting a title search is crucial to ascertain if a seller has the legal rights to sell a landed property and verify if there are no claims against his ownership.
To effectively carry out a title search, a real estate attorney can verify and cross-reference the landed property’s title at the local land registry, checking to ensure that the property in question is free from any encumbrances such as unpaid rates/levies, legal disputes, court orders, boundaries disputes etc that could affect its sale
If these issues are discovered, a real estate attorney is tasked with the duty of resolving them before proceeding with the transaction. This can be done via the documentation of a title insurance or title deed which conforms to the local zoning laws and maintains the juridristriction of proper land use. Such title insurance or deed will protect the interests of the affected party from any future encumbrances over the property’s ownership.
In summary, a good title search is of key importance to an incontestable transfer of ownership of any landed property and is often useful in settling any real estate dispute that might surface.
4. Proper Advocacy and Negotiation Handling
In addition to preparing and reviewing documents and titles searches, another skill possessed by real estate attorney include negotiation skills. This is one of the most challenging aspects of real estate as it requires strong communication skills to handle the terms of a real estate transactional process.
This role usually requires that the estate attorney advocate for his clients; that is, representing his clientale during the negotiation process to get the best desirable outcome for his client.
Most real estate shareholders think they can handle negotiations as it is only about getting the best price for the property, not minding the fact that negotiations involve numerous aspects beyond the property price like repair requests, property inspections, closing dates adjustments etc.
For these reasons, the services of a real estate attorney is highly invaluable as they use their vast knowledge of property laws and policies coupled with their expertise and experience to handle negotiations, thereby advocating for one’s best interests. They use high negotiation skills to eliminate the emotional edge of most negotiations, allowing them secure better terms and conditions for their clientale.
This will ensure that any agreement between the transacting parties is legally fair and reasonable.
5. Handling closing procedures
Usually, the final steps in any real estate transactions is the payment and transfer of ownership of the landed property from the seller to the buying shareholders.
Real estate attorneys are actively involved especially in these latter stages, especially at the closing stages to oversee the the whole process.
They ensure that the right, legal documents are signed correctly, the right amount adequately paid to the right account of the seller and ensure that the necessary financial obligations included in the agreement are met. This will ensure that both transacting parties are in total compliance with the law and that the transaction runs smoothly as planned.
In addition, the presence of a real estate attorney during these final stages can help minimise the risks of any last minute issues that might spring up and resolve them appropriately as the case might be.
Conclusion
The matters of real estate laws within the Nigerian real estate market can be very complex and difficult to navigate. But exploring the market nonetheless, especially in the Nigerian ecosystem without the proper legal expertise of real estate attorneys will ultimately lead to costly mistakes.
From the article, we know that an estate attorney gives real estate shareholders an upper-hand, helping them to fully grasp and understand their rights and obligations whilst protecting them from going against the bad side of the law.
So in essence, having a real estate attorney is more of securing a valuable asset for a real estate shareholder particularly in his endless journey of numerous property transactions, preventing frivolous disputes and providing legal guidance throughout the whole real estate journey.