Real Estate Marketing & Beyond
As a real estate agent, there are few things more frustrating than working with a client who is knee-deep in a closing standstill. With a sellers’ market upping the ante, the time between the seller accepting an offer and the buyer receiving the keys can crank up the heat on an already make-or-break situation, which is why most agents prefer a quick-and-easy close.
Ultimately, closing delays lose you money and keep you from focusing more time and attention on clients ready to move forward with the escrow process. Luckily, realtors can facilitate a quick close and streamline finalization by proactively dissolving potential complications.
Between organizing, verifying, and thoroughly checking documentation, accounts, and pre-approvals, agents can sidestep delays with ease. If you’re looking to up your selling game and tighten your closing period, read on for six tips for lightning-fast escrow periods.
Executing documentation is a crucial piece of the closing pie, requiring an outside service to verify participants’ identities and confirm specific details about the proceeding to ensure everyone’s safety. However, most notary businesses are off-site, making it challenging to coordinate convenient times for participants to meet. Because physical notaries can be inconvenient, many realtors have begun utilizing mobile verification services to streamline the closing process.
When you partner with mobile notary services like these, you benefit from unlimited availability, easy access, and fast processing times. Documentation like mortgages, deeds, and agreements are also easily verified and inputted into a single, secure database when you partner with mobile notaries.
Financing complications make up over a quarter of closing delays, which means pre-approvals on mortgages are critical if you hope to keep escrow periods short. Fortunately, getting pre-approved usually only requires a few simple details, like the address from the home your client is interested in. Encouraging pre-approval can shave a few weeks off of closing, saving you are your client time and headaches.
Before you can finish closing, you need to make sure you and your client have met all contingencies within the deal. Sellers often require inspections, appraisals, and walkthroughs before finalizing the contract, which means you’ll need to be proactive in meeting any requirements in the agreement. Communicate thoroughly with your client early on in the closing process to ensure resolved contingencies promptly.
One of the most critical components to speeding up closing periods is staying organized. Selling and purchasing a home includes various documentation verifying your clients’ personal information, home deeds, mortgage payments, and more. Ensure you’re communicating early on with clients about the different paperwork and authentications they’ll need to provide and keep a detailed filing system for easy access.
After your client has been pre-approved for their mortgage, they need to maintain their current financial standing to ensure their contract stays intact throughout escrow. Whether it be a new job or a large purchase, any changes will require a lender to re-evaluate your clients’ assets. Misrepresented financials can take weeks to verify, which is why you should communicate with buyers upfront and check-in frequently during closing.
Streamlining closing procedures saves you and your client weeks of wasted time and heaps of frustration. By being proactive, keeping organized, communicating clearly, and actively dousing any fires that come along, you can keep the escrow period short and take on additional clientele.
Closing costs are indeed a problem many real estate agents encounter. I have a friend in the industry and he has a hard time closing customers.