The Homeowner's Corner

Dedicated to the Notary Profession

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I have been in business in the Kansas City area since May of 1993. In 2005 mobil notary services were added in response to requests from lenders and closing service companies. Since I am a former loan officer from California and have notarized literally 1000's of documents. As an experienced notary, I think it's about time I took time to address some of the questions I get asked by homeowners when I go out to help them sign their loan documents. I am doing this with some degree of trepidation. As a notary, my responsibility is only to verify identities and make sure signatures on the loan documents are done correctly and I never try to answer your questions about the loan or other documents you are signing in front of me without involving your loan officer or title officer. However, as a former loan officer, I can see that homeowners, especially those who have applied for a home refinance online, only meet one person face-to-face in the transaction: the notary. Some of your questions go way beyond the actual documents that you sign. I will try to address these questions from time to time. Keep in mind that I can only make suggestions, its up to you to decide if the options I address are a good fit for you.

Increasing Payments and/or Paying Off the Loan Early: Many homeowners ask this question during the signing process. Some of the lenders are a real help because they include a disclosure sheet that tells the homeowner that they can do this, and give a number to call or email contact to set something up. Other lenders don't do this, but have policies in place, if the homeowner asks. My usual comment is to tell the borrower that they need to contact their lender about the range in programs they may have for setting up and making accelerated payments. But in the midst of the questions, I detect deeper underlying questions that go beyond "will my lender allow this, and where can I sign up for accelerated payments?"

The questions the homeowners sometimes have are along the lines of: "Increased or accelerated payments sound like a good idea, but I don't know how much it will cost, what the frequency of payments should or can be, and how much will these payments reduce the time I will be paying on my mortage?" This tells me that you as a homeowner want to do some research on this topic before you contact the lender.

Quick Research : If you want to plug in some numbers and see how different payment senarios play out, go to the American Banker's Association website
More Information : One of the best informational resources I have found for you on paying off your loan early is found in a small ebook on financial planning. It has a section on Paying Off Your Mortgage. Cost for the book is $14.95.

Removing Erroneous Information From Your Credit Report: Estimates on the chances that there is erroneous information on your credit reports run as high as 79%. This is because the reporting is done electronically, and is seldom checked by a human being. One of the borrowers I signed up a few months ago spotted an error on the Loan Application showing a loan on a car he didn't own, and knew nothing about. I got a quick lesson from the borrower when he picked up the phone, called the credit reporting bureau, and immediately got the data removed. Some of you may not experience anything quite so fast. A couple of sources for "do it yourself" guides for you to consider are:

Clean Credit Guide : The first is a true do it yourself guide that will help you plan your approach in cleaning up credit reports, and goes into some detail about how to improve credit ratings. It is Clean Credit.
Credit Repair Membership: This is a membership that offers self help strategies for credit repair and debt consolidation. It offers lifetime access for a one-time fee of $39.95. For membership in a credit repair help group, Click Here .

If You Want To Understand Credit Systems Where You Are Concerned In General: A good resource for you to find out how credit reporting, credit scores, paying off debt, avoiding bad credit reports can work for you is The Credit Secrets Bible. The cost is $67.

Property Taxes: Recently a number of clients have commented about property taxes. A number of them didn't make the connection that their escrow/impound account is separate from their loan payment. A number of the firms I work for are very good at explaining that the taxes or insurance portion of a monthly payment may go up, through no fault of the mortgage company. The escrow/impound payment will go up so that you avoid any shortfall at the end of the year or whenever the payments for homeowner's insurance and/or property taxes are due. If you want to question the property tax you owe, the mortgage company is not the one to approach. Instead, you might want to check out a little known publication that is a complete guide to reducing your property taxes, you will even be given a free ebook on the subject just for visiting the site that can help you reduce property taxes.