Is $500 too much for attorney fees? Purchase agreement and assignment contract

[Alex Peau]

Hey BP, Im taking everyone's advise about contacting an attorney to have contracts revised before use. I've been emailing an attorney that was referred to me by a reputable investor in my area and was wondering if $500 for up to 4 hours of work is too much to be paying for his legal services? I provided him the contracts that I had downloaded from reitips.com and he said there wasn't too much tweaking that needed to be done. The contracts I had sent to him were a standard purchase agreement and an assignment contract. Any thoughts on whether or not I should sign the retainer agreement or not would be greatly appreciated.

[Steven Stokes]

I'm a big believer in you get what you pay for and paying top dollar will sometimes save you more than it will cost you.

This is usually very true with attorneys. My advice is consider what services the attorney can offer you in exchange for what it will cost you.

For example; I bought a property in Nashville, Tennessee. I didn't have any contacts in Tennessee so besides the agent I was blind to the area.

I contacted a few attorneys to hire them to do the deal. One attorney was a low cost attorney a few hundred dollars to look at the deal and handle the closing. It was a really good deal. Then there was another firm that literally told me he had to have a $5k retainer just to look at the deal.

I talked to one of the 5k firm's partner's and asked them how they would help me if I brought them on my team.

The low cost attorney seemed busy and inefficient. I had some doubts that they would get the work done on time and I felt I would get the lowest amount of work done to get it right.

The 5k firm gave me a full presentation about how they could help me in the deal, people who they knew who had an excellent reputation and could work with me and made introductions to people who were very helpful in getting a successful deal done in an area that I knew no one.

So which one do you think was a better place to spend the money?

I went with the 5k firm and they were worth every penny. I'm sure they made me much more than they cost me and did much more than the few hundred dollar attorney would have been able to do.

I'm sorry this was so long I hope this helps. :)