Had a closing scheduled for 8:30 am this morning. Late yesterday afternoon, the lender stopped communicating with us, we had no documents or final HUD, and so we contacted the borrower and asked to re-schedule the appointment for later in the day.
What happened yesterday afternoon? Here's a behind the scenes peek into the world of a title agent:
Having preliminary instructions in hand Tracey, a member of our HUD Team, prepared a draft HUD-1 settlement statement. She noticed that the loan amount was odd, it had cents, and so asked the lender if it was correct. The lender rep. replied that it was not a final loan amount and that she would get final figures to us along with documents.
From 3pm EST on, Tracey attempted to reach this lender rep. We only had one contact, but Tracey also hit zero and attempted to find another person in the lender's office for assistance. No one was available to help, thus the request to delay closing.
I was in the office until roughly 6pm last night and by the time I left, we still had not received documents for the file.
This morning, documents arrived via e-mail around 9:30. The sender hit the send button last night at 7:19pm, 4:pm in California. I can't account for the delay in delivery, but that's one of the ongoing issues with web document delivery. Sometimes it's instantaneous and sometimes it's not. At any rate, this lender could have returned Tracey's call to at least say she was sending documents.
With documents now in hand, Tracey reviewed the package and instructions. She revised the HUD-1 Settlement Statement to reflect the adjusted loan amount, e-mailed and faxed it to the lender. The bottom line showed the borrower owing a little over $200 to close. The lender wanted the cash requirement to zero out so she reduced the loan amount by $200. Tracey respectfully had to argue with her for awhile so that she would understand that the loan amount should be increased to reduce the cash requirement. The lender finally understood, revised the instructions and e-mailed us another set of documents which took over an hour to arrive in our office.
The transaction successfully closed early in the afternoon and Tracey had the opportunity to sit with the borrowers and help them understand the delay.
This peek into the back office is being provided to help you understand some of the give and take that occurs between a title agent and a mortgage lender. Once documents and instructions are received, the final HUD preparation and approval may take 30 minutes or with revisions, 8 hours. It is not unusal to revise HUD-1 Settlement Statements several times before the package is released to the closer.
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