ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, October 16, 1996 TAG: 9610160032
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: B-5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MAG POFF STAFF WRITER
Competitors for the business of handling real estate closings will clash in Roanoke Thursday at what is usually a routine meeting of the Council of the Virginia State Bar.
"It's not going to be an empty room," said Doug Gray, a lobbyist for the Virginia Association of Realtors in Richmond. The meeting is at 4 p.m. at the Hotel Roanoke and Conference Center.
"There will be a cast of thousands," said J.R. Hipple, a spokesman for a coalition that includes the Virginia Bankers Association, Lawyers Title Co., the Virginia Association of Home Builders and the Virginia Credit Union League.
They will be opposed in their views by the Virginia Real Estate Attorneys League.
At issue is a rule, proposed by a Virginia State Bar committee and rewritten as recently as Oct. 2, that would require that a lawyer be present at all real estate closings in order to answer any legal questions, according to Thomas A. Edmonds, executive director of the Virginia State Bar.
Edmonds said the council can reject the proposed rule, adopt it and forward it to the Virginia Supreme Court for consideration, or send it back to committee. The state Supreme Court would have to approve it before it could become effective.
The existing rule, adopted in 1980, does not require the presence of an attorney at the closing.
Since that rule's adoption, a host of settlement and real estate title companies have gotten into the business. All the parties agreed that so-called lay companies now dominate the business in Northern Virginia, although lawyers handle most closings in Western Virginia.
Gray said the state Realtors group will have several speakers plus a major delegation from Northern Virginia in opposition to changing the rule. The Roanoke Valley Association of Realtors, according to its executive director Laura Benjamin, expects to supply 40 to 50 spectators but no speakers. "We have been asked to bring bodies and not voices," she said.
The official position of the realty trade group is that home sellers and buyers should have a choice about who oversees the closing of a home sale, a service for which buyers generally pay several hundred dollars.
The organization of real estate attorneys also proposed legislation in this year's General Assembly that would have defined handling of a closing as the practice of law. That bill is pending before a study committee which has scheduled a hearing Oct. 31 in Richmond.
The proposed changes in the law and the rules also have been opposed by the Justice Department, the Federal Trade Commission and the Virginia attorney general. The counsel of the Virginia State Bar has also questioned the legality of the proposed rule.
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