Who can close a real estate sale in Virginia?

It is easy to assume a Virginia closing needs a lawyer at the head of the table. The Code of Virginia does not say that. It says who may act as the settlement agent, and attorneys are the first of six kinds on the list.

Va. Code 55.1-1003 A bars anyone from acting as a settlement agent on a Virginia real estate settlement, and bars a lender, seller, purchaser or borrower from contracting with anyone to act as one, unless two conditions are met. The person has not been convicted of a felony, or has had civil rights restored or been granted a writ of actual innocence. And the person is one of these:

Subsection B closes the loop: notwithstanding any rule of court, a settlement agent operating in compliance with the chapter, or a party to the transaction, may provide escrow, closing or settlement services and be paid for them. The word closing, in other words, is not reserved to one profession.

Both kinds can run the settlement. What separates them for a buyer or seller is who may give advice about the law, and to whom. The contract language Va. Code 55.1-1007 requires puts it this way:

No settlement agent can provide legal advice to any party to the transaction except a settlement agent who is engaged in the private practice of law in Virginia and who has been retained or engaged by a party to the transaction for the purpose of providing legal services to that party.

Va. Code 55.1-1007

Read the exception closely. An attorney acting as settlement agent can advise a party only where that attorney has been retained by that party to provide legal services. A title company, a broker or a bank running the closing cannot advise anyone on the law. To keep that line visible, Va. Code 55.1-1014 C directs the Virginia State Bar, consulting with the State Corporation Commission and the Real Estate Board, to adopt guidelines helping settlement agents avoid the unauthorized practice of law, and settlement agents have to furnish those guidelines to a party who asks.

So a question about what the contract means, how to take title, or what conveys with a house under a particular contract is an attorney's to answer for the party who hired that attorney, not a question for whoever happens to be running the table.

Knowing who may close still leaves the practical question of who chooses. Inside Chapter 10 the statute answers it.

Under Va. Code 55.1-1006, a purchaser or borrower has the right to select the settlement agent, and "the seller in such a transaction may not require the use of a particular settlement agent as a condition of the sale of the property." That right, and the rest of who does what between the contract and the recorded deed, is argued in full in the Land 101 guide to settlement in Virginia.

The chapter's reach is the part a land seller has to read twice. Its scope section says:

Except as provided in subsection B, this chapter applies only to transactions involving the purchase of or lending on the security of real estate located in the Commonwealth containing not more than four residential dwelling units.

Va. Code 55.1-1002 A

Subsection B lets a registered lay settlement agent serve any real property. Whether the rest of the chapter, including the buyer's right to choose, reaches a sale of wooded acreage, farm ground or a commercial tract with no residential dwelling unit is not something this page resolves. That is a question for an attorney.

Two practical questions sit next to this one. Whether the parties can sign from a distance is covered in whether a Virginia closing can happen remotely, and where the deed goes afterward in where to record a deed in Carroll County. Whoever closes, title insurance and the deed itself are separate pieces of the same closing.