When you finally buy a home and have your bid accepted by the seller, the next step is to transfer the title of the property. This is the exciting meeting during which the property and the attached debt officially becomes yours and your responsibility. To complete this new set of ownership documents, you need a real-estate title service. There may be a real-estate title service in your real-estate agent's office, or you may choose your own title service to act on your behalf. Here is how these two different sources for title services differ and their pros and cons.

The Titling Office Inside Your Agent's Office

A titling service inside your real-estate agent's office is quite convenient. Using it means that you can arrange a meeting with your agent and the titling agent at the same location and at any time that both your agent and the titling agent are in the office. Because they work out of the same office, the agents can easily coordinate their schedules to provide you with a couple of options for dates and times to meet and sign the final documents for your new home. This is simpler and less complicated than finding your own titling agent, but you may pay more for hiring a full-service real-estate agency.

A Separate Titling Agency

While it may be less convenient to find your own titling agency, and there may be some scheduling hurdles to get over, you may save a lot of money by doing this. This is because a titling agency will only charge for the hour of service it provides and the production of the papers needed to transfer the property into your name. It will also charge a small filing fee for filing with the county wherein your new home dwells so that you are legally and officially the property's new owner. All told, these fees could be several hundred dollars less than what a full-service real-estate agency will charge. When you are trying to keep your closing costs as low as possible, this is a very pleasant option.

Additional Pros and Cons

Some other pros to hiring a separate titling agency is that you may be able to hire an agent that keeps weekend or Saturday hours, while the real-estate agency does not. You may ask the titling agent questions for which he or she knows the specific answers and how they relate to your new county of residence. Cons might include the titling office being on the opposite side of the county or town from where your real-estate agent's office is, and this might mean that your agent will charge you extra for time and gas to make the titling appointment.