Email Elizabethtrid
How Badly Has TRID Delayed Home Sale Closings?
Every buyer getting a mortgage loan today needs to conform to TRID.
TRID is hardly the OMG everybody feared. Although mortgages have become much more complicated as time marches on. Back in the late 1970s and early 1980s, I used to process mortgages as a side business for some of my real estate clients. That meant I collected the application and financing documents, prepared a quick disclosure and collected a fee. Not so anymore, and it seems so long ago that the type of process I just described is like third-grade handwriting, a thing of the past. Nope, today the entire system has been overhauled in a major upheaval in an attempt to better disclose and simplify. It’s called TRID. The new TILA RESPA Integrated Disclosures.
If you ask Dan Tharp at Guild Mortgage, he will tell you that his associate Kim Hedges coined the acronym: The Reason I Drink. I’m not so sure though that a bunch of other people didn’t all come up with it at the same time, it’s that self-explanatory and a good jingle. Maybe Kim did originate it, but I can tell you that in many ways, TRID has changed how we do business. Today, only the educated and systems-guided professionals are able to provide a streamlined process for TRID. Everybody else is left to fend for themselves. And that’s a lot of professionals.
A few weeks ago, Mortgage News Daily picked up a report from Ellie Mae that noted TRID caused the average closing time to increase to an average of 49 days, which breaks down to an average 3-day bump. My own mortgage loan in Hawaii delayed our closing by four days, and our MLO called the file a slam-dunk. So, go figure.
I’ve had several clients last December whose files were delayed, one by more than 30 days, but most of those were due to taking borrowers off title, adding borrowers to title, and general overall lender screw-ups that should have been handled way in advance of ever going into contract, but I digress. At least they closed in 2015, which was a saving grace.
Today, the best way to assure you’ll close on time according to TRID is to make sure your MLO and escrow company are in sync with each other. I hear there are some escrow and title companies who are still not on board with TRID, and a number of MLOs who don’t have the process down pat, either. You can rest assured that Daniel Tharp at Guild Mortgage has all of his ducks in a row. I never see any mistakes from him or his team.
A Newfound Empathy for Home Buyers and TRID
Elizabeth Weintraub lanai recouping at Hawaii house after completing TRID paperwork.
One thing this experience of buying a home in Hawaii has taught me is how difficult home buyers have it today because of TRID, the new lending guidelines that have so many lenders and title companies in turmoil. The paperwork itself is enormous. I received a welcome email that required 48 initials / signatures each from my husband and me. I know this because my middle initial was missing from my DocuSign email and I could not insert it because I already have an account without it.
The only way to do it would have been to delete all the tags and start over, which DocuSign disclosed I had 48 for me alone. I had to contact the lender to find out if it was necessary according to TRID to have my middle initial on those documents, and the loan officer is not really certain. Hawaii has its own particular weirdnesses. If TRID does, there is still time to get it on the hard copy documents, which was being mailed to our home in Sacramento.
Because I am a Sacramento Realtor, I know the questions to ask. A regular buyer, however, does not.
Oddly enough, the lender did not upload the welcome package to DocuSign for me. She emailed it and asked that both my husband and I print it out and scan it back. That’s a lot of work for a buyer when it could be DocuSigned. Lenders should do that for you, right?
Then I noticed my rate was not locked, even though I had asked for it to be locked. It was floating and said so in the welcome package, which I promptly rectified. I asked the loan processor yesterday if she was indeed mailing the package to my home or if she was sending it FedX. When she used the words “mail” she actually meant FedX. Well, can she send it without requiring a signature for delivery? No, she says, she cannot. What? Then send it UPS, for crying out loud.
These examples are just the tip of the iceberg.
Most buyers don’t know enough to trouble-shoot their own loans because they are not in the real estate business and don’t know beans about TRID. This is how problems start and mushroom. I suspect buyer’s agents might need to work a bit more closely with buyers to try to anticipate difficulties and probably micro-manage potential difficulties.
Of course, it goes without saying, if a buyer is getting a loan through our preferred mortgage lender, there generally are no problems. These guys examine every document with a magnifying lens.
