Legal Question in Real Estate Law in Minnesota

Re: ''Contract for Deed''

You are not legally required to use an attorney for this, but there are good reasons to do so:

First, there are specific things required before the contract will be accepted for recording by the reigster of deeds, and it is very important that the contract be recorded against the land that it covers.

Second, there are things that should be in the contract to protect various interests of the vendor and vendee. The register of deeds won't check for these things before recording, but not having them could cause problems later. For example, right now I am in the process of cancelling a contract for deed that the vendee defaulted on. The process is slower and more expensive than it should have been because a provision was not included in the recorded contract.

Please e-mail me if you have further questions.

Re: ''Contract for Deed''

What you pay a lawyer for is his or her experience in knowing how to "fill out the form". So, the answer is, yes, you can do it yourself. But there are a lot of technicalities to real estate; just this afternoon I examined an abstract with a serious error.