As of April 8, 2010, e-signed third-party documents, including real estate contracts, are now being accepted by the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) with the issuance of the April 8, 2010 mortgagee letter.
This mortgagee letter is the first in what is expected to be a series of responses to this initiative. With this policy statement from the nation's largest mortgage insurer, real estate professionals can use DocuSign to get real estate contracts, addenda and other documents signed electronically, and their buyers can apply for FHA insurance with confidence. The FHA mortgagee letter can be found on HUD.GOV website.
Whether you are a DocuSign customer or not, the issuance of today's mortgagee letter affects you and the way real estate transactions will be managed going forward.
This is a great time for eCommerce and real estate in particular. Those of you who have been skeptical to jump on the electronic signature bandwagon because of the stories you have heard from fellow agents, you can now feel assured that you will have no more problems with lenders and acceptance of your real estate transactions where you have used electronic signatures and in particular DocuSign.
According to DocuSign, they began direct conversations with FHA on this issue back in October of 2008, and shared blog posts about FHA and Lender Acceptance of electronic signature back in July 2009. For those of you who may have heard, last fall DocuSign spearheaded an industry-wide effort to move the FHA to formally recognize e-signed third-party documents.
The staff at the FHA has been pushing for progress for over two years. It took some early encouragement and help from many concerned parties such as the National Association of REALTORS® (NAR) and ESRA to help get this mortgagee letter published.
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