Email Elizabethdocusign
Real Estate Contracts Using Digital Signatures Like DocuSign
Real estate contracts using digital signatures like DocuSign can be an excellent tool, or it can be a real pain. Yesterday was a prime example. We received a purchase contract on one of our listings in the morning. We sent it out for digital signatures. Our seller had signed it but evidently didn’t click on the finish button. This stalled the entire process. I contacted our seller, but he said he had completed the process and could not finish it. I logged on to DocuSign, and it was not complete. What to do?
Though he was the only legal signature required for his corporation, he also has a silent partner. He informed me he wanted them both to sign the agreement as well. We uploaded the second signer and sent it out again for signatures. Still, no completion alert came in the email. The second attempt had also stalled yet again. Also, the purchase contract had now expired. It is feeling a bit like Groundhog Day at this point.
Signing real estate contracts using Digital signatures like DocuSign was undoubtedly proving to be a challenge for our sellers. DocuSign email also can only sign one person at a time before it is automatically sent to the next person to sign. I always sign first, so I know it went out. The second signer, the managing partner, seemed to be having issues. Or, perhaps he wanted to see his partners’ signatures before he signed? I decided to upload the purchase contract yet again and add my extension of time addendum, which included verbiage: “this is an as-is sale, the roof and pest damage would not be repaired.”
Third time is the charm. I decided to place the second partner of the corporation into first place as a signer, so the managing partner would sign last. it is now 6 PM as the partners were busy during the day. This time It worked like a charm. The purchase agreement came back fully signed. We are now in escrow. Technology is helpful, but it can not replace human interaction. DocuSign could not know to add on another buyer. It does not resend when stalled with the second party. Also, it is not intuitive, so it could not figure out what was needed as there was another factor that had not been communicated; the managing partner needed to see the second partner’s signature, before feeling comfortable to sign.
Maybe someday DocuSign will be able to ask questions and complete the process without human intervention. These are not new glitches, and they’ve not corrected this glitch in the last 17 years. I was the first Realtor to use a laptop and digital signature in my office. I had a buyer friend, Jason Smith, and he worked in the technology field. He wanted to buy a home in the Phoenix Field area of Fair Oaks. He said, ” You do use digital signatures, right?” I replied, ” I do now.” I logged on and used it for the first time. Jason signed the offer, and within two hours, including showing the property, I had the proposal sent to the agent’s email. The offer was accepted within 10 minutes. I knew at that moment, my life as a Realtor was about to change in a big way.
Before DocuSign-type technology was available, I had been delivering offers in person or by fax. I no longer use a fax machine. My transaction coordinator has e-fax in the event a client who is not comfortable with digital signatures needs to fax. The moral of this story, technology can expedite; however, in this case, I could have driven to the two partners’ homes, obtained the signatures and scanned them to the buyer’s agent in less time than the digital process had taken yesterday.
If you want to buy or sell using digital signatures, call us as we never give up. We will sign you in person or use fax if needed, whatever it takes. Call Weintraub & Wallace Realtors at RE/MAX Gold, 916-233-6759.
— JaCi Wallace
Beware of a Hacked Email From DocuSign
Usually when I receive a suspicious email from another Sacramento Realtor, I send it back with a warning to let the agent know somebody might have hacked that email account. If it looks like they have attached something, perhaps an offer, I also mention that I don’t open unsolicited links. If they want to send me a document, then send it as an attachment. I’m extremely careful about what I click on, yet I realize the day will come when something malicious will get through; it’s just a matter of when, but I never expected to see a hacked email from DocuSign with an envelope.
Oh, sure, there are the goofy gmail stuff that ask recipients to click on a link, and most appear really hokey. Of course, if you’re overly busy and less prone to caution, I can see how an agent might be tempted to click on it. No agent wants to not open a purchase offer on her Sacramento listing. There are a lot of cyber attacks going on in gmail accounts, probably because they are so prevalent.
The hacked email from DocuSign I received this morning looked real. Very real. I studied it for a while. It was yellow and blue, just like the DocuSign emails I get from myself when I sign my own listings and purchase contracts online. It even had the access code displayed in case a person did not want to click on the “review documents” link. Best I could tell it was missing the App link. However, let me caution you that if you decide to use the access code that DocuSign provides in each and every email, do NOT click on the DocuSign link in the email. Open a new browser window and go to DocuSign yourself to enter the code.
I have received a bunch of offers on a new listing in Sacramento that just went pending. I suspected if there was an important document sent to me via DocuSign, it will most likely for that listing. Sometimes lazy agents who think they are being proactive and efficient will cc the listing agent on an offer in DocuSign, so after all of the parties have signed the offer, DocuSign will automatically send the purchase offer to the listing agent. I prefer to email directly to confirm receipt. Less chance for error.
Fortunately for this Sacramento Realtor, I have a software program that detects malicious hacks and viruses. After I finished studying the DocuSign email and clicked on it, it opened a window that said I should NOT proceed to that website because it was dangerous. Yup, it was a hacked email from DocuSign. I’m afraid other Sacramento Realtors and customers of DocuSign might not be so lucky.
See, this is just one MORE reason to always include a special message intended for the recipient like I do on my DocuSign transmissions. But even that is not sufficient. To be completely safe, you should probably use the code and go directly to DocuSign, if in doubt.
What will they come up with next? It’s anybody’s guess. You can never be too diligent to protect your computer against vicious cyber attacks.
More to a Sunday in Sacramento Than Open Houses
Weird stuff went on in Sacramento this Sunday, but not weird enough to make this city like Portland or anything. To kick off a pre-open-house Sunday morning, we are heading off to brunch at The Red Rabbit in Midtown on J Street, over by my Lyon office, when we drive by this car pile up (left). At first, I’m wondering: why is this car in front of us at a deadstop on 26th Street? Then, I realize its driver is staring at a car on top of another car. So, I did what any good citizen would do in this day and age, and I hopped out of the car to shoot a photo with my cellphone.
This is terrible, what we do, taking photos of other people’s tragedies. You can’t witness any horrible event without watching people stand there with their stupid cellphones taking pictures. It could be a bloody police shootout on Riverside Boulevard, and people would be on top of the roof shooting cellphone photos. What do they do with those photos? Send them to their uncle in Pocatello? Why would he care? Oh, right, because he’s living in Pocatello and not in this exciting metropolitan city known as Sacramento.
Which takes us to the carnivorous plant show at Shepard Garden and Arts Center in McKinley Park in East Sacramento. This is an annual show by the Sacramento Bromeliad and Carnivorous Plant Society, which we’ve never attended in the past, but after the car pileup, it called to us as a likely destination. Table upon table of strikingly beautiful and silent plants. There was nobody screaming FEED ME. Even the kids in tow with their parents were quiet.
As I was shooting a picture of this baby Venus Fly Trap (above), my cellphone rang. It was a woman who might be interested in adopting the rescue Chihuahuas (left). Well, she did hold an interest until she came home from a weekend vacation to discover her cat was not happy that she had left. I once had a cat destroy an entire bathroom — twice. Hers just ruined the sofa. However, she needed to pass on the adoption but has a friend who might be interested. Yes, we still have those rescue Chihuahuas in our back yard.
Look at how stupendously adorable they are! The little brown one is crying because she has no home. Nobody wants her. She is incredibly sweet. She does not understand. Her sister, the sad little girl on the right, is so stoic but you can see the struggle in her brave little eyes, because she’s clinging to a shred of hope that a loving home for them is just around the corner. You can call Elizabeth Weintraub at 916.233.6759.
I came back to my home in Land Park hoping that DocuSign had sent me a signed offer for one of my recent listings. This is for a client who told me she no longer wants to deal with the Internet. She was canceling her email service and all Internet services. It’s difficult for me, as a Sacramento real estate agent, to digest this attitude, but I go with the flow. I figured I’d slip in the purchase contract by sending it to DocuSign before this momentous event happened. When I called my client to find out why she had not signed the purchase contract I had uploaded to DocuSign, she informed me that DocuSign asked if she was willing to do business on the Internet. Of course, the answer to that question for her was a resounding NO. Followed by a scream.
Maybe somebody today will come over and adopt the Chihuahuas? A girl can hope.
About Digital Signatures for Short Sale Banks
It’s not just short sale banks that don’t like digital signatures. It’s pretty much all banks, except the government. It’s hard to believe that here we are in the fourth quarter of 2012 and short sale banks are refusing to accept digital signatures on a purchase contract or any legal documents. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we have a lot of fraud and crooks, and it’s hard to control every aspect of a transaction — to filter out the possibility of mortgage fraud, but give us a break. If we wanted to forge signatures, I suppose it’s pretty easy to do.
Real estate clients love DocuSign, which is the digital service this Sacramento agent uses to put deals together. They can check their email for the notification from DocuSign. Then, they click on the link in the email which takes them to the DocuSign website where their document is awaiting perusal and signature. They choose a signature they like and they adopt that signature by clicking on it. Every place in the purchase offer that requires an initial or a signature, they just click. It’s like magic. The initial and / or signature is applied right there on their monitor. It doesn’t get any easier.
After the purchase offer is executed by all of the buyers and the listing agent, the digital service sends a completed copy to all parties. This process saves a ton of trees. It’s all electronic. It makes sense to do business this way.
Yet, the short sale banks won’t accept a digital signature. Nope, they make you print it out, sign and initial with an ink pen, and then fax the documents so they can more easily lose those documents. You would think the fax number would at least be an efax number so the documents would go to an email account, but no. They go to an old-fashioned fax machine and fall out all over the floor, where somebody walks by, kicks them, sends them scattered, until the night cleaning crew shows up to sweep them into the trash. This is how we do business at the big banks.
Even the government, like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, accepts digital signatures. Why can’t the short sale banks?
