ALT’s New Settlement Directive
March 19, 2020
Good Afternoon Everyone,
As the situation regarding the Coronavirus continues to evolve, we’ve implemented yet another a new settlement directive in an effort to do our part to avoid further spread of the virus.
For settlements that take place in our office, we are limiting those in attendance to anyone required to sign mortgage related documents - buyers/borrowers only - on that specific day. We can either mail commission checks or leave them for pick-up at the settlement location.
For settlements that take place outside of our office, we have decided after consulting with our closers, that the buyer(s)/borrower(s) will be the only parties permitted to be present in the settlement room. The same options will apply for the distribution of commission checks.
Today and tomorrow, we have closings scheduled at the offices of two different mortgage brokers and I’m happy to say that they are totally on-board with this idea. Both brokers were in full agreement that they will be available if an issue arises, but that they would prefer not to be in the settlement room.
Furthermore, we are asking that if you host a settlement in your office, kindly wipe everything down with sanitary wipes prior to settlement. We’re doing this at our office and we’ve gone as far as sanitizing all of our pens, should one of our customers need to use one.
Finally, I think that we all hope that quarantines currently in place begin to ease up sometime soon. If you read about the history of pandemics however, we’ll have a long way to go before we’re completely out of the woods. Our thoughts are that this new settlement policy should most likely remain in effect for at least the next couple of months (if not longer) and will be reevaluated at some point in the future.
This settlement structure, although somewhat different for those of us in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, is a year round practice in escrow states like California where it is the rare occasion that buyers, sellers and agents are at the settlement table at the same time.
Should you have any other suggestions as to how we can improve upon this process, please let us know.
Thank you in advance for your continued cooperation and we hope that everyone is weathering this storm.
The ALT Staff