The answer is, it depends.
Real estate purchases in North Idaho do not require the services of an attorney (unlike some other states). In fact, for most transactions, hiring an attorney to assist you can be an unnecessary use of your money.
There has been a recent rash of ‘blog’ posts recently promoting the services of an attorney when purchasing North Idaho real estate. These ‘blog’ posts are actually nothing but paid advertising services promoting the use of attorney’s.
When it comes to purchasing real estate in North Idaho, it is highly likely you’ll use the services of a licensed real estate agent. If you use the services of a Realtor®, your transaction will take place on state mandated forms, forms written and prepared by attorney’s specifically so that North Idaho real estate purchases do not require attorney assistance.
If your purchase is complex and difficult, then have a local real estate attorney referred to you. We work with several excellent North Idaho real estate attorney’s and we are more than happy to provide their information to you in order to assist you in your real estate purchase.
Filed under: For Buyers | Tagged: north idaho real estate attorneys
Last summer my fiance’ had an unfortunate experience while considering buying property in Coeur d’ Alene. He was considering buying a piece of property that was on the market. He signed some preliminary paperwork to purchase based on a contingency of some money that was promised from a court case that was going to come in. The employer turned out to not be an official employer and is now going to serve time for impersonating an offiecer and a multitude of other things he did. No money was ever placed as a deposit on the property. The owner a lawyer, filed a
$ 100,000 court case claiming he had to move out of the property and was inconvenienced. I had been up there visiting and photographed the property initially. I then went up again and relooked at the property months later, nothing had been moved out they even had the same dust in the same places as before. But being that the owner was a lawyer he had the power to do this and being from California did not know this was even taking place. No warrants or paperwork were ever sent. The contingency should have been null and void due to the money never coming through yet the owner believed he received $5,000. He was either mislead by the realtor or just assumed. This is a horrible case of being taken advantage of. So I would say having a lawyer on your side to make sure someone like this does not take advantage of you is important. Never in dealing with real estate have I seen this happen, most sellers are honest people and honor their agreements. This was disapointing as I was raised there and couldn’t believe this happened to him.
Christina,
Great post. We typically use real estate lawyers on business purchases, especially when there is no real property involved. Other than that the standard forms seem to cover most transactions in Idaho.
Best Regards,
Mike
Disappointed Property Purchaser –
I’m very sorry about your attempt to purchase experience. As I have no way of looking through the paperwork involved in your story, I have no way of determining what happened in the process. The two things that stand out is that 1) you don’t say whether you hired a Realtor to represent you, the buyer (not the sellers Realtor) and 2) you say that no money was put as a deposit on the property along with the offer to purchase. If this is the case, you do not have an offer. On the other hand, you may have signed a note for the earnest money and not remember doing that.
My post above still stands, for ordinary real estate purchases in Kootenai County Idaho, when you hire a Realtor, an attorney is not necessary.