Kevin Mathews (00:00.148)
Unlock the secrets to smart homeownership and financial success with home and finance insights. Whether you're a first time buyer, seasoned homeowner or real estate professional, this podcast delivers expert information on home financing, insurance, tax strategies, wealth building and more. Hosted by a mortgage and real estate pro who's been in the game for decades. We interview top industry experts.

to share actionable insights that help you protect, grow, and maximize your home investment. Welcome to Home and Finance Insights. I'm your host, Kevin Matthews. I'm a licensed mortgage broker with Empire Home Loans Inc. I've been involved in real estate sales, investing, property management, and home finance since 1985. Today, we're pulling back the curtain on what happens behind the scenes during a real estate transaction.

I'm joined by Tim Miculon, a seasoned title professional, assistant vice president of Fidelity National Title. Tim and I have worked together since the early nineties. He has a great wealth of knowledge about anything related to do title and escrow. Tim, welcome to home and finance insights. Thank you, Kevin. Good to see you. Yeah, you too. So tell us a little bit about yourself. And I don't know the answer to this question. How did you get a start in this business?

After college, I came home to the family restaurant business. So we had a group of real estate agents that would come in for lunch almost every day. They would ask me, so Tim, what are you going to do now that you've graduated? And I said, I don't know. I'm looking for a job right now. And they said, well, gosh, Tim, do you golf? And I was like, yeah, I golf. I liked to golf. And he goes, you go fishing? I go, yeah, I like to fish. You like to have a good time? I'm like, yeah, I like to have a good time. And they all looked at each other and they go, Tim, I think you'd be a great title rep. I was like, title rep?

What's what's that? Didn't even know what title was escrow or anything like that. They just said you would be great. And I said, well, what would I be doing? And they said you'd be taking agents and lenders out to lunch and taking them golfing and taking them fishing and building those relationships. And in turn, you hoped that they would open their escrows with your title company. And I was like, wow, that sounds like an amazing job. Sounds fun. So that was it. I started interviewing with different title companies.

Kevin Mathews (02:25.545)
And, I was interviewing during the winter months, which is typically a slow time in the industry. And a lot of title companies probably aren't adding to their staff during the winter. But when the spring time came around, I had met with three or four different title companies and business started picking up. And I got that phone call and that opportunity and started in customer service, learning the business and then got into sales.

We've been doing it now for 35 years. And that, and that was with, was that Plaster title company you got started with? That's right. When I got into the industry and I got matched up with the, escrow officer there and, met you then. lot of buyers hear escrow or title insurance and they wonder what it is and why it matters. So can you elaborate a little bit on that? Sure. Definitely. So title insurance, escrow.

There's two functions in our business. We've got the title insurance where we have, we're examining the real estate property and the people that own the property. And then we have the escrow portion of the business where they're almost acting as accountants and attorneys in one. And what they're doing is they're coordinating the whole transaction from when we get a buyer and we have a seller and all the paperwork necessary to sign over title interest to that buyer.

And so that's pretty much the two functions that we do. And in between all of that, we have, you know, an escrow. Now the insurance part is probably the most important part. And that's going to be making sure that the buyer who's buying the property is actually buying it from who owns the property. There could be multiple owners on property and there also could be fraud in there too, where people might be changing title into other people's names or taking people off title. so.

That's all a part of the insurance part. And then also each property could possibly have a list of liens against the property. And that could be mortgages, could be equity lines. There could also be judgments and liens like IRS liens against the actual owner of the property. And so when you're taking on that property, those liens will follow the property without title insurance and making sure that they're cleared.

Kevin Mathews (04:46.579)
You wouldn't want to buy a piece of property that's got loans on it already. Maybe even a utility loan against the property, like air conditioning, windows. There are loans and they do get secured against the property. The owner of the property could have judgments against them that also get attached to the property. And then also IRS liens, unpaid taxes. Let's say a person wants to sell their property for sale by owner and they find somebody that wants to buy their

house and they could do the transaction without a title company, without an escrow company, but there's huge risk because unless you know that seller was as a relative, even though I guess even if it's relative, it could be a bad deal. There's no insuring of that title and there's no way for a buyer of a property to know what's really attached to that title. Is that how I'm understanding it? That's correct.

So when a transaction is coming together, we will order what's called a preliminary title report from our title department. And that's where the research happens. That's the one part of the business that they're looking into the property and they're putting together a report of everything that's attached to that property. It's funny that you mentioned family member or friend, because I do get asked questions all the time, like, Tim, I've got this vacant piece of property. It's only $25,000.

My uncle wants to sell it to me and do I really need title insurance? Well, I would get title insurance. And that's because there's a bunch of things that could happen that the owner of the property could have liens against them that would follow that property. And you wouldn't know it unless you did a report against the property. What happens is when you don't get title insurance, we call that clouded title. And what happens is if you were to take title of that property without title insurance.

down the road, you're looking to get a loan or even sell the property. We're going to have to go back to that original owner that deeded title over to you to make sure there was no fraud done. Number one, then number two, we have to run their name and see if there were any liens associated with that party that could be attached to the property at the time before you took title. So you could actually be buying a property that has more liens against it than what you bought it for.

Kevin Mathews (07:09.901)
And the worst thing to do is if you paid cash for that, then you could lose out all of your money if there are liens that totaled more than what the properties owed. And for how much you pay for title insurance, you're very minimal to have that security of when you buy that property, that it is free and clear of all liens is what you need to do. And so I recommend it no matter what. Now, if you're getting a mortgage loan, the lender is going to require

title insurance. And that's because they know what could possibly happen. They want to make sure that they are in the position that they need to be in for that type of loan. Right. Right. I get that. So how does how does a title company do the research? How do they find out what could be attached to the title? What, you know, liens and such? How do they figure that out? So we have many programs that we can search people's names.

social security number and address and find out all the information there is to know about that property. We've come a long way. Back in the day, there were books that they used. And I'm going back hundreds of years where somebody would sign over interest of a property to somebody else. And it was kept in this book. And then from there, it went to microfiche and microfilm. And I was in the business.

Which is sad to say when we were using microfilm and microfish, we didn't have computers back then. And so we would take pictures, images of microfish and film, which were copies of documents that were recorded at the county, at the assessor's office. And so that's how we kind of put it together. Now we've got these programs that we're running, the names, socials, everything to make sure. We also have paperwork that we send out to the owner.

for them to sign called a statement of identity. And it will list multiple things about them, where they've lived and items like that. So we can make sure we've got the right person because you know, sometimes people have the same name and we have to determine, you know, which person that is. And when you, when you run these names, they're called name runs, right? The sling, when you run that it'll, it'll show if they've got these lanes against them. And that's, that's your job to investigate it. Cause you're

Kevin Mathews (09:29.057)
title insurance, you're insuring title. You're the buyer or borrower is paying you money to guarantee that you're getting clean title and that you'll be able to secure loans against it, sell it later. I've noticed that during some out of state transactions, some states use attorneys instead of escrow companies. How come they do that? And what's the advantage of using an escrow company instead of an attorney?

So there are some states that are attorney driven. They still will require title insurance. So they would still use my company to actually put together the transaction and ensure the transaction. It's more expensive to be working with an attorney versus an escrow company. What we charge for an escrow is probably about a quarter of the cost.

Over the years, companies have been put together that could save the client money to do a transaction. A normal escrow fee on a property around 500,000 might be about $1,200, where an attorney would charge probably triple that to do the transaction. there are some cases in even in California where attorneys will, they can still handle the escrow. It's just going to cost more. There's no requirement that they have to use an escrow company.

Correct. I don't hear of it happening too often. So because of the cost, I'm sure we hear this phrase all the time. We're going to open up escrow. So what, what really is escrow? So escrow is the process of taking us through that transaction to deliver clean title to the buyer. And so the process typically takes between 15 and 30 days. What happens is we get.

escrow is opened. We'll get that. We'll get an email or a phone call. I want to open up escrow. I've got a deal. It's usually from the realtors. Sometimes the lender is the one ordering the escrow. And what they're doing is they're going to give us the contract. We're going to follow the contract as our instructions. So that's the real estate contract. We act as the third neutral party to the transaction. So what's going to happen is the buyer is going to deposit funds into escrow and account.

Kevin Mathews (11:52.029)
And that money is held secure with us. And actually nobody can grab that money, buyer or seller, until we receive instructions signed by both parties. So if the buyer said, Hey, I don't want to do the escrow anymore. I want my money back. We would have to get instructions from both the seller saying, yes, that's okay. We want to move forward with another buyer. And so we're acting as the bank, the accountant to the transaction.

We're preparing legal documentation that's going to be signed in escrow. The escrow team is also going to be paying off all the liens that are against the property. They're going to be following the preliminary title report, the report, the title put together that will list all the items that need to be taken care of for us to transfer clear title. And that process takes about 15 to 30 days. We'll be working with the lender. The lender will be sending their loan docs to our escrow company.

We will then take those loan docs, prepare our instructions, we'll have their instructions, and we get ready to put together the signing where the buyers will come in, sign the loan docs, sign our paperwork, sign the new data trust. We'll be putting that together. At the same time, we're also working with the seller. We're paying off their debts. We're asking them, hey, we need to see your mortgage statement because it's got your account number. We're going to be contacting them to get a payoff.

So that the day we close, have interest paid up to that exact day. And then we're playing with all the different other fees that need to be taken care of. We will be recording all the documents at the Canada Recorder's office. So we're preparing the documents, we're getting them signed, and then we go record them. After that, we get confirmation that the documents have been recorded. So officially, title has transferred. We then will let all the parties know that we've got a completed escrow.

At that time too, we're going to be cutting all the checks that everybody gets paid out on. So the money comes in from the lender for the purchase of the property. Money's coming in from the buyer, the deposit and any other money that they're putting down. And what we'll be doing is paying off the old mortgages. We're paying the realtors, the lenders. There could be inspections done on the property, reports that were done on the property.

Kevin Mathews (14:10.957)
paying off all of the items that need to be paid off to secure a clear transfer. sum it up, you guys are at the day of closing. It's all done. It's all settled. Everything's paid off. Everybody's got their money and they can move on. What happens, it's pretty cool. We're waiting for that recording and sometimes we've got 10 deals in one office recording in one day. But as soon as that deal records, we can go to the computer and hit

print and all the checks just start getting printed or we're doing wires to some accounts depending on what the client wants to do. And we could be cutting up to 20, 25, 30 checks on one transaction and we're making sure it's getting out to everybody. a typical purchase transaction, there is a lenders and owners title policies. What's the difference between the two? Why do we need two different title policies if they're, if they're

both guaranteeing title. So the owner is going to require title insurance up to the amount of the sale of the property. And there are items on there that they're going to want to make sure that they have when they transfer title so that everything is taken care of. The lender has their own lender policy, which is secured against the loan, the amount of the loan. And there are items on there that the lender is going to require to be in certain positions. And they ask for insurance to make sure that's going to happen that way.

The amounts, the lender's policy is typically a lot less than the owner's policy and doesn't cover as much. you have a real life situation where someone buying a property could have been taken advantage of or could have been exposed to fraud, but title insurance actually saved them? Yes. And this happened about a year ago. We had a person open up escrow in our office. It was a vacant piece of property.

And, um, the buyer came in to our office. said they wanted to put more money into escrow and told us that they had actually already wired funds, $10,000 to secure this property to the person that was selling the property. So they already sent money to who said they were the owner. So that's a big red flag off the bat because money usually doesn't go to the parties. goes into escrow. And most people know that real estate people know that agents.

Kevin Mathews (16:39.511)
That's why it's always good to work with a realtor because in this case, the person was not a realtor. They had bought property and sold property before. And, what they did was they hired him $10,000 to secure the property. And then they came to our office wanting to know more about what was going on. And we immediately knew that there was something fishy going on. And after trying to get ahold of the owner, we eventually got ahold of the real owner.

which happened to be in Wilton and works for a security company that investigates. So we were excited that maybe they might be able to catch the fraudster in this transaction, but that did happen. The person lost $10,000. They wired funds to some person's account. They had already done a deal with us about two years prior. They know that money funds should go to escrow, but they were talked into sending money and that happens. Wow. Wow.

There's still scammers out there no matter, no matter what. I got another crazy story. So go for it. Listen to this one. Years ago, there was a family in the Placerville area. owned a large ranch and they wanted to make sure that that ranch never got developed into a subdivision or commercial. They put together some legal documentation that was recorded against the property that their property can only be used as a park. And over the years,

that property sat and probably 50 years after that documentation was secured against the property, that property, was actually sold and started to get developed. What happened was one of the, and it probably could have gotten developed and nobody said anything, but a family member happened to be come up to see the property and saw that it was underdeveloped.

It was starting to be developed and they actually called the title company and the title company was responsible. one that transferred title without the information stating that this property can only be used as a part that title company had to pay all damages and to get that property back to where it was before it transferred and started to get developed. Big, it was a big deal. Wow. So things do get missed and that's, that's why you.

Kevin Mathews (19:01.345)
why we need title insurance. Loans get missed seconds, maybe a private private loan that is recorded gets missed. When you say seconds, just so everybody knows when, when we say firsts or seconds, we're talking about a mortgage, the first mortgage that's recorded chronologically, and then a second mortgage that might be recorded chronologically. That's correct. Some properties could have up to three mortgages. There are programs available where you get a first,

And then you get a second that will maybe make the difference up to make it a hundred percent loan. And then sometimes there's even a third loan where they can get their closing cost finance too. So sometimes from the very beginning, you can end up with three, or maybe you get your first and then maybe five years later, you get a pool installed and you have a loan from a pool company that against the property. that would technically be a third at that point.

Is that what you're saying? Well, if they had a first and then they went and got a pool loan. I thought you, I thought we already talked about a second. Sorry. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I had a situation happen to me when I first got into real estate in the eighties before we had computers and I actually purchased a property at a foreclosure sale in, gosh, I think it was in Oakland actually. And when I purchased the property on the courthouse steps, it was vacant.

And I bought it for a certain amount of money. And I did my research beforehand. I'd gone to a title company in Livermore and had looked everything up on microfiche to make sure that what I was buying was a first position loan. Well, after I bought the property, turns out that there was a, that I was actually buying a second position loan. There was already first loan ahead of

ahead of this one that I purchased, meaning I was on the hook for that first loan. And it pretty much got me out of buying foreclosures because it was such a big expense that I wasn't ready for. So when you're buying a property at foreclosure sale, you don't have that protection of title insurance. You're buying it straight from the courthouse and you have no guarantees unless you really know what's going on. Is that still the case?

Kevin Mathews (21:27.802)
Yep. Still the case. Very risky. Most investors make sure they have enough room. They do their best, but they still have times where things come up. They also have what's called tax sales. So someone that doesn't pay their taxes, the county can sell their property because they were failed to pay their taxes. And so what happens on those transactions is an owner can come back.

and say, Hey, no one's ever contacted me. I'm going to pay the taxes. They can actually take ownership back over on a tax sale property. There are so many years that go by that they can actually come back and claim that property. And so that's the risk you take an owner that comes back and, and says, Hey, what happened here? I own this property, but you sold my property. There is a timeline that

You have to wait before you can even, a title company would even transfer titles. Let's say you bought this property on a tax sale and you wanted to sell it again. Well, a title company is not going to ensure that transaction for fidelity. It's five years, five years later, because the owner can come back and claim that property and, and can state that, Hey, I was never notified of this. I live in Oregon and I never received any information. I just came up to visit and now someone's living in my house.

And so there is a timeline that they can come back and claim that property, pay the back taxes, even though someone took title already through a tax sale. So it's a risk that the owner, the new owner from the tag, the buyer who bought it at the tax sale could risk losing everything, their whole investment. I'm not quite sure what the years are. So, so tax sales for closed properties, they don't come with title insurance normally because the transaction is outside of an escrow.

and title, correct? When a buyer makes an offer on a property, who picks the title company? do, and they have a choice, correct? That's correct. And interesting through the state of California, even in just in California, in some areas, some counties, it's usually chosen by the buyer's agent and other counties. It's usually chosen by the listing agents. It's different and it's negotiable. It's all negotiable.

Kevin Mathews (23:49.73)
In Sacramento County, where I am Placer El Dorado, it's typically driven by the listing agent. I see an offer written up and the buyer has chosen fidelity title on the, on the purchase contract. And usually it's the, the real estate agent that recommends what title company they like because they're people they work with and they want a smooth transaction, which, which makes sense. But

Ultimately, the buyer does have that choice, but if they put it on the offer that, I want escrow to be opened up with fidelity. And then the seller can counter that back and say, no, want escrow to be opened up with placer title. Then it's, it's, it's up to the buyer and seller to negotiate how far they want to go with it as to who picks it. Now, if the buyer's typically paying for it, and they said they're going to pay for it, then tip it. Then the seller usually.

lets the buyer choose since they're paying for the fee. That makes sense. If they choose in their contract that they're going to pay that fee, then usually they get to choose the company. just say that there was a previous escrow opened on a property with a title company and it fell out of escrow. It didn't close transaction. Now you've got a new buyer. Typically they like to go with the same title company because most of the work's been done already.

That's correct. So prelim's been done. A report's been done on the property, which we always suggest doing even before the house hits the market to make sure, you know, what liens are against the property. We've had transactions where the seller kind of forgot about a, a solar lien on a property that was $50,000. And what happened was.

the agent and the owner came up with a price to sell the property. They actually did open up escrow on a Friday, but they went into contract over the weekend on a deal. So they had a buyer make an offer and it was accepted before they got the prelim prelim comes out Monday or Tuesday and it shows a $50,000.00. Solarly owner agent didn't know about it.

Kevin Mathews (26:09.078)
Owner was like, my gosh, that's right. I do. can't sell the property at this price. I can't do it. I don't want to, I don't want to sell my property. Well, it's too late. You just entered into a contract and the buyer did push and they ended up having to close that deal. I think the real estate company and the, and the owner kind of made an agreement to came up with an amount, but they did close that transaction 50,000 short than what the seller believed they were getting.

So you recommend that when a real estate agent lists a property for sale, that they should contact their title company and open up at least order a title report before they even get offers. That's correct. Is there a cost for that? There is not. Now some companies do put a cost on that prelim. We make, you know, we want to make sure that we're doing it.

and hopefully we're going to get that transaction, but there are times where we don't. so we don't charge for it, but there, let me think here. That's a good question, Kevin, because there's some title companies right now that are not doing it and we're getting the transaction just so you know. well, let's, let's just, yeah, let's just stick with fidelity then just, just put it in that respect.

We suggest getting the prelim to make sure you know what you're selling, make sure the liens, you know what the liens are and what the easements could be on the property. We suggest it for the example I just gave you. There is no charge. We just hope in turn that we're going to get the transaction and we usually do, but there will be times where we don't and we don't charge the client. are common title issues that delay or derail closings? Probably the biggest issue to close on an escrow.

would be probably the lender, the buyer working with the lender. Things change during the course of an escrow. Things could pop up. Somebody could lose a job. We had a situation where the person went to three days a week versus five, and then they no longer qualified. Some people go out, you know, most lenders will tell their buyers, don't go out and get new credit. Don't go buy anything. And then they go out and they buy a bunch of maybe items at a

Kevin Mathews (28:31.342)
furniture store and the lender will then run, run their credit and realize that they added debt and now they don't qualify anymore. Things like that. there. So, but what, but that's more of the lender issues. What, what are, are there any title issues that delay or derail closings? Usually not. They're, you know, child support. So we'll get these judgments that will pop up against a party's name and it could be child support.

And now we're working with different divisions within the county or state to get a payoff, a demand on that child support. They might take 10 days, 14 days before we can get that. They might have a set time that says, Hey, it's going to take two weeks. And so sometimes those timetables could alter the contract and the closing date. That would be an example of that. Also, HOAs are.

becoming more more prevalent in the business. HOA companies charge for reports. Things could pop up in the report that the lender doesn't like. Let's say there's construction work that needs to be done. Maybe there's too many renters. They usually have percentages of owner-occupied versus renters, and the lender gets the report and they might not want to lend on that property because most of the condos are rentals.

And they don't want that. And, they may be switching financing and things like that during the course of the transaction. Usually it's not the title company holding it up. Usually it has to do with the loan and working with the buyers and the like. So common title issues that delay or derail closings. had, I had one recently where we got into escrow. We, we had the appraisal done. had a clear.

clearance to close escrow within two weeks. And we found out through the title company that there were tax liens, income tax liens to the seller for state and federal. And the problem was it took about an extra two weeks to get those amounts verified from state and federal state was a little quicker than federal. The federal took an extra week, I think, but

Kevin Mathews (30:52.89)
That's, that's why you have an escrow company involved to, handle these things, but there could be delays. That's correct. So usually we hope to get that information more upfront. we, as soon as escrow is open, we have forms that we will email mail called the statement of identity and they fill out that information. Sometimes they don't return it and we have to stay on the client.

to make sure we're getting that information. Once we get the information, then we will run it. And so if they give that information towards the end of the transaction, and then we run it, and then we come up with something that we have to deal with, well, then it could be extended the length of the escrow. So how can buyers and sellers make sure that their transaction goes quickly and smoothly? When they're asked to fill out paperwork or have any questions, if

title has any questions or the lender have any questions, just to get those back to them, the answers. If there's forms that need to be filled out and signed to get that back, because we're going to be running those numbers, your social security, things like that. And things could pop up towards the end if we don't get the information upfront.

Any tips for agents or loan officers to improve communication with your escrow and title teams? I guess that's pretty open-ended there. No, go ahead. mean, just communication is key. You know, we're here typically eight to five, Monday through Friday. There are salespeople that do give their number out to their clients, realtors and lenders.

who I do get calls on the weekends for information, which, you know, I love to provide if I'm available. So communication is key. Just make sure you're checking your emails and your messages and getting back to us. If we call you for something, you know, it's for a reason. if you don't get back to us, it's just going to possibly delay the yes grow. Now let's talk about wire fraud and security.

Kevin Mathews (32:58.554)
So wire fraud has become a huge concern. And I've noticed that on just about every title company's email signature line, they, they talk about a don't wire funds to people you don't know and, and such, what should clients do to protect themselves? number one, they're always going to want to be communicating with the title company. They're going to want to make sure they've got the right phone number, not from an email because emails can be altered. And I got a great story to tell you about that. But number one.

You want to maybe Google the office number, talk to your escrow officer, their assistant, ask those types of questions to make sure you're not being taken advantage of. So I have a story for you. I was about ready to meet with a realtor and I called him up on the phone and he was freaking out. And I was like, what's going on? goes, my gosh, someone hacked my email and my client just called me, told me, Hey,

I got the email. I'm going to wire funds. My client said, well, wait a second. It's not time to wire funds. What are you talking about? And the guy goes, I got this email from you. You sent it to me to wire funds. And he goes, Hey, don't do anything right now. Send me that email. want to see it. So he forwarded the email to my client. Meanwhile, I'm driving to his office because I want to see what's going on. they had an email. The first message came from

A title company and it had the signature. had the picture of the escrow officer, but the phone numbers were off. The email was off. And then that email looked like it was sent to the realtor saying, we're ready to go. The realtors signature was there. Photo was there. Everything was there, but the phone numbers were off. And then that got forwarded to the borrower who was told to go get money and wire it to the title company. And then it was about $125,000.

And, they were able to stop it because the borrower actually called the real estate agent just to kind of double check, which probably doesn't happen all the time. So that was crazy to actually see the emails and how close they looked. And so that was just an example of what could happen. it got, you know, they're able to take care of it and stop it. the email return email addresses, they didn't match up.

Kevin Mathews (35:23.372)
They didn't match up. That's correct. were off by one letter. The emails were off by one letter. Phone numbers were off. I even called the phone numbers. They weren't even working. But they almost got that borrower to go to the bank. If that agent didn't pick up their phone to say, no, that wasn't me, that could have happened. So title companies don't normally email a client with wire instructions saying, hey, it's time for the money. That's correct.

How do they go about that? How do they request money? Well, right now what's happening is there's secured portals that they could get, you know, as soon as they open up escrow, they can get into a program where it allows them communication through the title company, through a secure portal. For anything sensitive. Correct. And then we also get phone calls. We also get the phone call. Hey, I'm wiring funds. I just want to make sure I'm sending it to the right person.

They ask the questions, we go over it with them. So they called the office number and talked to us. What actually happens on closing day from your end? So what we're doing is once we have all the funds in and the file is fully funded. So that means the borrower, the buyer of the property has brought the rest of their funds in. Let's say they're putting 20 % down and they're getting an 80 % loan.

Maybe they put down $5,000. They have to come up with the rest and then any other fees that they have. Plus, then we're waiting for the lender's fees. Once we have all the fees in for the transaction, we will release the deed and the deed of trust to be recorded at the Canon Recorder's office. So we have a team waiting for all of our title offices. We have eight offices in the region and we have probably maybe 50 closings happening.

And they're just waiting for us to tell them that escrow number one, one, five, two, seven, nine, three is ready to record. So we release that escrow to be recorded and they'll have a list of them. go to the County. They hand it over to the clerks. They're going through processing all of it. And that takes time, especially if you've got eight different title companies bringing in 50 deals at one time. So usually it's given all to them, all of the paperwork.

Kevin Mathews (37:47.204)
And then, or email, some of them is now done electronically. And then what happens is we wait. Sacramento has two recording times. So we'll have two different times where they're getting back to us to let us know escrow number 111-2345 recorded. Here's their document number. And so they give us all of that information. We then take that information and then we immediately will call the clients.

typically the realtors, so that they can deliver the good news to their clients, the buyer and seller that were on record and we recorded. Congratulations. That's when we start printing the checks and wiring the funds to pay for everything. And so that would be our closing time.

Are there any misconceptions people have about the closing process? There are. Sometimes people will sign their documentation and then they'll be like, okay, where are my keys? And that part hasn't been done, which is very interesting because back East, when they sign, they get the keys, even though they haven't recorded yet, which to me doesn't make sense because it's officially not in their name.

So it's very interesting that it could take another week to get confirmation that the document, the deed has actually recorded. So there are states, usually back East, that do it when you're at the signing table is when you, when you hand that check over to the title company, the sellers, they're handing the keys over to the buyer. We don't do that here in California. We wait until it records and make sure that it records because there are mistakes on deeds that can maybe

get the deed get pulled and there's something that we might have to do. Maybe we missed a notary. We missed a signature. Something was done wrong and we correct it before we record again. I've had that happen several times where there was, we thought we were going to record and then the County did not like some verbiage that the notary inserted or the, or the form they used, or it could be anything. Maybe an incomplete deed that didn't have all the vesting information.

Kevin Mathews (40:04.752)
could be missing a legal description, could be missing a parcel number. and so, yeah, I mean, it doesn't happen often, but it does happen. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Do you have any crazy or memorable closing story? We can come back to that one. That's fine. One I can't probably say on. All right. What's one thing you wish every new home buyer knew about this process? Well,

Probably that the process takes time not to stress too much about closing on a certain day. The transaction typically will happen. Sometimes things get delayed a day here or a day there. Just to be patient, it's an exciting time. Some of the biggest purchase you'll ever make. Enjoy it. Have fun with it. you know, if something doesn't happen on the timeline that you were hoping for, you know, it will happen.

Thank you, Tim, for being here. I really appreciate it. And I got a lot out of it as I'm sure my listeners did too. So thanks for being here. Thank you, Kevin. It was great. Good to see you again. Okay. You too. All right. That was it for today. That was Tim Miculin from Fidelity Title. If you want more information or have more questions, please see the contact info in the description of the video. Thanks for watching.

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Kevin can be reached at kevinmathews.com or email kevinmathews at empirehomeloans.com. Empire Home Loans Inc. NMLS number 1839243. California DRE license number 02086593. Refer to nmlsconsumeraccess.org to see additional licensing information. The corporate office address is 44301 Hazel Avenue.

Kevin Mathews (42:29.786)
Suite 225 Fair Oaks, California 95628. This communication is for informational purposes only. This is not a commitment to lend. All programs are subject to change or cancellation at any time and without notice. Empire Home Loans. Inc. supports equal housing opportunity.