Stewart Title Zoom Meeting About Financing, Escrows During Pandemic
The other day I attended an excellent Zoom meeting and here are the highlights. A number of California counties are using e-recording while their offices are closed to the public. The original documents must be in the escrow officer hands while the documents for recording are transmitted electronically. Submissions are routinely kicked back if the notary signature doesn’t match the notary’s name on their stamp, if the notary stamp is too light, and for other reasons. Alameda County still doesn’t do e-recording and they have a physical Dropbox where everything has to be put in by 9:30 am. Title companies are preparing everything the day before so they can have their couriers pick up the recording packages by 7:30am, day of scheduled closing, to deliver to the county drop box by 9:30 am. If the package is kicked back you are stuck with getting it back in the next day. There are drive-by notaries with gloves, masks, and they can take a photo of your driver’s license without touching it. Thirty-five states have approved Remote Online Notarization (RON) but not California.
Financing: There were three lenders on the call. Bank of America has processed 350,000 small business applications and the 349 billion small business loan dollars is all gone. Rates before COVID-19 were as low as 2.7% 30-year amortization 10 year due, then on March 17th, 25% of the lenders backed out of the market and on March 23rd, 50% of the lenders went on hold. Lenders are focused on asset management versus new loans. Some borrowers need help, others don’t, and the caution is don’t ask for loan relief if you don’t need it as it will be a negative in your credit file. Multi-family and industrial financing are seeing lower leverage and higher vacancy written into the loan, with 5-18 months principal and interest held back by the lender as additional security. Wells Fargo was avoiding cash-out loans and jumbo loans might require having $250,000 in a Wells Fargo account. Retail financing, the stores must be open for business and still paying rent. Hospitality loans were almost non-existent.
