S
shaylahc
Guest
We were in contract for home and the sale didn't go through because major defects were discovered upon inspection. We went on to purchase another home a few weeks later, and were angered and shocked to discover that the lawyer (who would have been our lawer had we purchased the 1st home) had "snuck in" a $250 "title work fee" relating to the failed sale of the first home. We had not been informed that there would be any charges, in fact, we had been told by our broker that the lawyer said they would waive any fees as long as we used them as the atorney for our next closing. The attorney says he has no recollection of that, and that he doesn't think any of his staff would say that either. What bothers me the most about this $250 fee is that 1) he put in on our settlement statement. We feel that the sale of the old home was irrelevant to the sale of our new home and we asked him to take it off the settlement statement and submit a seperate bill. He refused. 2) Most people don't get their settlement statements until closing. He knew that we would have no way of finding out about the fee until closing thus "sneaking it in" where it would be too late to "complain" about it once we were there and check in hand. 3) the fact that he refused to remove it from our other settlement statement felt like extortion to me. It was his indirect way of saying that he wasn't going to close on our new home unless we paid this fee.
But the part that bothers me the most about this (#4 LOL) is that he has very little paperwork to back up his $250 "fee". He says it was for "title work", but the house was only in contract for about 8 days. The survey had not been ordered, nor had title insurance been secured. He didn't willing present me with any paperwork at closing, but after annoying him about it he finally gave me some cheap photocopies of what looks like computer print outs (it looks like someone sat at a very old computer and printed out a few pages) and one page that looks like a copy of the title. It was a grand total of like 6 pages. The lawyer says he deserves to get paid even though the sale didn't go through, but his standard fee is $475 and that includes EVERYTHING. I felt that he didn't do $250 worth of work on the other home, and just used the opportunity to milk us out of an additional $250 at closing (in addition to the $475 he charged us for the attorney work on the other house).
I live in NC. Do you think what he did was unethical or unfair? What agency can I report him to? TIA
But the part that bothers me the most about this (#4 LOL) is that he has very little paperwork to back up his $250 "fee". He says it was for "title work", but the house was only in contract for about 8 days. The survey had not been ordered, nor had title insurance been secured. He didn't willing present me with any paperwork at closing, but after annoying him about it he finally gave me some cheap photocopies of what looks like computer print outs (it looks like someone sat at a very old computer and printed out a few pages) and one page that looks like a copy of the title. It was a grand total of like 6 pages. The lawyer says he deserves to get paid even though the sale didn't go through, but his standard fee is $475 and that includes EVERYTHING. I felt that he didn't do $250 worth of work on the other home, and just used the opportunity to milk us out of an additional $250 at closing (in addition to the $475 he charged us for the attorney work on the other house).
I live in NC. Do you think what he did was unethical or unfair? What agency can I report him to? TIA