Attorney-drafted per deal, or one attorney-built document set for my state that I reuse?

Before the vote, one question I'd want answered in writing. If you use the reusable set and something in it fails, whose problem is it? A drafted document for a named transaction and a set handed over with an instruction sheet are not the same relationship, and I suspect the instruction sheet exists partly to make that clear. Ask the firm directly how they describe their responsibility for the set once you're filling it in yourself.

You've framed this as documents when the risk in your deals is title, and you said so yourself in the middle of the post. Access easements, mineral reservations, a mobile home that never got de-titled, unsigned heirs. None of those get caught or missed by which note form you used. They get caught by someone reading the chain and the exceptions.

So the question I'd actually put to the room is whether the money is better spent on attorney review of the title commitment on every deal and a reused document set, versus fresh drafting and a skim of the commitment. I know which of those has bitten me.

Twelve deals a year with custom legal work on each already sounds like a second job, and I want income without one. The template set plus annual review is the only version of this I'd survive.

@anchor's question is the one I'd want answered first too. My first rental is closing soon and every quote I've gotten changes meaning depending on what the engagement letter actually says they're responsible for.

I'm at the ceiling of the hybrid answer and it's messier than it looks on paper. I set a threshold at $75k purchase price, templates below, attorney above. What happened is that the deals that hurt me were three of my cheapest, because cheap parcels are cheap for reasons and the reasons are legal about half the time. A dollar threshold sorts by price. Your risk isn't sorted by price.

@keystone what would you sort by instead? I'm trying to build a rule I can follow before I have the experience to make the call each time.

@pike sort by whether the deal has a feature the set was never built for. Seller carrying paper on a parcel with a clean chain, one owner, no structures, that's what the set is for. Anything with a life estate, an heir problem, a mobile home, a shared well, a road maintenance agreement, or a wrap around existing debt goes to counsel regardless of price.

@arbor the honest reason to buy the set isn't the money. It's that the instruction sheet forces the firm to write down which terms are structural and which are negotiable, and that document is more useful to you than any of the four forms. I'd pay the $9k for the instruction sheet alone.

Zoning is my whole world and I'll add the thing your framing leaves out. On rural parcels the document that determines whether you can do anything with the land often isn't in your closing package at all, it's a county ordinance, a septic permit history, or a plat note. Neither the template nor the drafted note protects you there, and the attorney who bills you $2,400 for the note may never look at it unless you ask.

Voting for the set. Spending the difference on the county.

Still building my list so I have no scars yet, but $9k once versus $12k to $30k a year isn't a close call arithmetically. What would change my vote is if the annual review turns out to be a real review rather than a rubber stamp. @arbor did they say what the annual actually covers?

Small portfolio here and the thing that breaks at scale is version control, not drafting. I ran a reused set for two years and ended up with four variants in circulation because I edited a clause on one deal and it propagated. When a dispute came up I couldn't immediately say which version that borrower had signed.

If you go with the set, keep a locked master and a signed copy filed per deal with the date and version on it. Boring, and it's the part people skip.

@thicket that's exactly how I got hurt, except mine was a maturity date I'd changed on one wrap and forgot to change back. Cost me a rewrite and a very awkward conversation.

@fathom is right that title is where the money should go. I've never once had a note form fail me. I've had two chains fail me.

Mostly confused reader here, but if the note and the security instrument are the paper you might one day have to enforce, doesn't that argue for having an attorney draft them? Or is enforcement mostly determined by state law regardless of what the form says?

@vellum both matter, and how a court treats a given clause depends on your state's statutes and case law, which is why the state-specific set is a different animal than a generic form. That's a question for licensed counsel in the state, not for me.

@arbor your numbers need one more line. What's the cost of a document failure, times how often it happens? If a bad note package on an $80k parcel costs you $15k to fix and it happens once in twenty deals, that's $750 a deal in expected cost, which is under the $1,100 to $2,400 you're quoted. That math favors the set. Flip either input and it reverses, and I don't think you or I know the frequency. Anyone claiming to is guessing.

Fast deals, thin margins, and I'll say the unpopular part. I run the set on everything and I've accepted that one deal in some number of years will go badly and I'll pay for it out of the volume the speed produced. Not a recommendation to anyone, just where I landed. @ledger's expected-cost frame is the same one I use, I just have a higher tolerance for being wrong once.