I provide house sitting services for auction houses to earn extra money, and so far I have sat in on two properties. My job is to open the house and make sure it's ready for presentation to Open Houses and Auctions. The first house I did was in a bad neighborhood. I opened the locked box and accessed the house and spent 4 hours in a cold house with no heat. No one came to see the property and after 4 hours was up, I locked the door back, secured the premises and left. My second property I had to sit for was way more interesting. I unlocked the house and prepared it for open house prior to the auction. People came in droved to see the property and four properties were to be auctioned from the one location I was at. When the auction people came, it was exciting. They moved about like pros. Got the bidders all registered and issued numbers for bidding. The actual auction was in person and online too. It was really cool watching 4 properties sell in just under 1 hour. I was quite taken by the direction technology has taken us. The properties sold for cheap prices and there was minimal damages to the property. I look forward to doing many more open houses. Easy work for extra money.

I received an email from a guy that stated he needed my notary services and that the documents would be 22 pages in length. I agreed to meet him at a nearby Subway Sandwich shop. There, he showed me two sets of documents that needed to be signed. This was for a property owner to sell her home. There was an additional copy for the owner to sign. He signed all of his parts and I noted it in my notary journal. He said I can gather the other signatures and meet him back at Subway and notarize everything there. Yes, by this times bells did ring. I asked him would he be accompanying me to the sellers home and he said no that he could not be present for legal reasons. He drove his car and pointed out the property for me to go to. I went inside the property and met with the seller. She looked over all the papers with her husband and noticed one signature was missing. (Note here that this was Sunday that I did all this.) She then read that the actual settlement on the property is on Monday, the very next day. And she said the numbers didn't match up. She said something fishy was going on and she would not have any parts of it. She refused to sign. I noted it in my notary Journal. And left. The guy was waiting nearby outside and led us back to Subway Sandwich shop. There i told him that the seller refused to sign because a signature was missing, settlement isn't until Monday, the numbers didn't match and she wanted an attorney to look over the papers. He said fine and reach in his pocket and paid me and I gave him a receipt and left.

We have to ask questions to make sure the transactions that we are notarizing are legitimate. If not, we the notary could be left wide open for a lawsuit that even our Errors and Omissions insurance won't be able to cover. We have to cover ourselves at all cost. No one will do this for us.

I noticed that each signing companies are different even though the same goal is apparent. They come off being very nice when requesting your services. However, if anything goes wrong, their whole demeanor changes. My very first signing. I made mistakes and had to go back out to make corrections. I did as I was told, but the extra money I was supposed to get for going back out never materialized. When I called to inquire about the extra funds, no one would talk to me. Instead, I got a nasty email stating that I had made a lot of mistakes and they would never use my services again. I responded and said, "Wow, such harsh language. I didn't think I deserved all of that." needless to say, I never dealt with them again. I haven't had any problems with any other company. I guess practice makes perfect because I now make sure all the i's are dotted and the t's are crossed. There is one company I did a signing for. I have the clients name in my notary journal. I know I was supposed to do an invoice at the end of the signing. But now, I have forgot who that company was. I would not have to call the client and get the name of the company from them and then call so I can get the invoice to them to get paid. Other than those two things, I have had no problems in receiving payments or getting signing jobs.