goption Brian's blog

Notary renewal

I renewed my California notary commission yesterday at the County Clerk's office in Van Nuys. Other than a guy arguing with the staff for 20 minutes about a badly formatted real estate document he was trying to file, everything went smoothly.

I'm good through October, 2014.

Renewal

My notary commission expired in March, and I've been meaning to complete the mail-order training manual for months now. I finally finished it up during lunch today, and mailed off the completion certificate.

The training company will mail me the final certificate that will allow me to sign up for the actual test. After that is fingerprints, a background check, a new bond and seal, E&O insurance, NNA membership — none of which is a big hit individually, but when you put them all together it totals up to a lot of time and money.

It has always made me wonder why so many people want to become notaries.

San Marino Loan Signing

Out of the blue I got a call from a title company in Virginia asking if I could do a 9:00pm loan signing on Wednesday in San Marino. The nice man accepted my inflated fee quote a little to quickly — maybe I should quoted more...

I arrived at the appointed time, and had to wait no more than a couple of minutes for the borrowers to come home. They were a very nice couple, late thirties, who have extensive real estate investments, and were experienced loan signers. The docs had been overnighted to them, so I hadn't seen them before I arrived, but there weren't any big surprises, and with their experience things went very smoothly.

I made a couple of extra passes through the docs to make sure I hadn't missed anything, and left them around 10:15pm - short and sweet. I had fifteen minutes of paperwork to finish this morning, and went out at lunch time to drop the packet off at UPS.

Grant Deed

My brother-in-law Rob needed to add Yvette's name to the title as part of their remodel financing, so I volunteered to drive out to notarize a Grant Deed. When I got there, Rob noticed that some of the documents indicated the house was in Los Angeles County; further review showed the on the Grant Deed itself, the house was listed as being in both Los Angeles County and San Bernardino County — in the same paragraph.

We called Carole, who said to fill out and notarize everything just in case, so we plodded through. It's likely I'll have to do it again in a day or two.

Loan Docs

I did my first loan document signing this evening. I got a call from Mobile Docs around 4:45pm asking if I was available for a 7:00pm signing appointment in Rosemead, and I agreed. They e-mailed the documents — as about eight attachments in five e-mails — and I printed them out at work. I reviewed my old signing agent lessons to brush up, and called the clients to confirm the time and remind them about the ID requirements.

I arrived on time, and things began well. I followed the standard process, and there were no problems, even with a set of documents that needed to be back dated. We used a small, circular table; I had the husband sit to my immediate left, with the wife directly across. We did the journal entries first (per the standard plan). As they signed each document, I collected them in the open space on my right.

At the end, I gave them their copies, and told them to call their loan agent if they had any questions about the loan, but to call me if they had any questions about the signing process.

As I gave the docs a final review I noticed that I'd missed a signature, so the next day I drove to their offices (her's in Rosemead, his in Vernon) to fix it up.

All in all, a good start. I should get a check for $100 in a week or so.

Forms

• 14 Steps to proper notarization
• California Acknowledgement - 2006
• California Jurat- 2005

Jurat Form

View PDF file