Title company vs closing attorney vs escrow agent, is that three jobs or one?

Four separate functions, and one person or company can hold more than one of them.

The title insurance underwriter is the company that issues the policy and takes the risk on title defects. The title agent is the local business that searches the record, issues the commitment on the underwriter's paper, and gets paid a share of the premium. The settlement or escrow agent is whoever holds the money, prepares the settlement statement, disburses, and gets documents recorded. That role is neutral between the parties. The attorney is a licensed lawyer giving legal advice to a client, drafting or reviewing documents, and in some places conducting the closing.

So a closing attorney can be all four in one office: she runs the closing, she's an agent for an underwriter, she holds the escrow, and she represents somebody. That's why the words blur together.

"Attorney state" is market shorthand, not a legal term. Loosely people mean a state where an attorney customarily handles closings or where some part of the closing, examining title or preparing documents, has been held to be the practice of law. The strict answer depends on your state's statutes, court decisions and bar opinions, and those change, so ask a local attorney or your state bar rather than a forum. Recording practice, who may prepare a deed and what a settlement agent may do all vary by state.

On your last question: the escrow or settlement agent does not represent you, even when they're friendly and answer all your calls. The deed preparer doesn't represent you either unless you've engaged them. If you want someone whose duty runs to you, you hire your own attorney with an engagement letter.

The neutral part is the thing that took me a few closings to feel. The settlement agent will tell you what the document says and will not tell you whether signing it is a good idea for you.

Worth adding for underwriting purposes: the split of who pays which side of that fee stack is local custom and negotiable, and it moves your cash to close by real money. On a $400k purchase I've seen the owner's policy premium land anywhere from about $1,400 to $2,600 depending on the state's rate structure, plus settlement fees of $400 to $1,200 on top. If you're modeling closing costs off a national average you're wrong in both directions somewhere.

So if the same office is the title agent and the escrow agent and also represents the seller, who tells the buyer that the survey exception is still sitting in the commitment? Nobody in that arrangement is on the buyer's side of the table.

juniper, in practice nobody does, which is why the exceptions page is the one thing I read line by line myself. The commitment will list the exceptions plainly. Whether you should accept them is your problem or your attorney's.

I'll say the dual-role thing hasn't bothered me on ordinary purchases. It bothered me a lot on a deal with a shared driveway, because the party who noticed the issue had no duty to explain what it meant for me.

Reading this I thought I understood it and then sextant's fee numbers made me realize I don't know who pays for what in my own state yet. Starting there.