When I bought my first condo, settlement was a bit of a circus. I totally pissed off the title attorney by insisting on reading all of the pages of papers that I was signing. The guy was pretty rude.
"Ya want the condo, ya sign the papers."
Little did this guy know that within a year, I'd become a Realtor®. And in all the years I've been in real estate, I've never ever had a single client settle at this place.
One local title attorney I do recommend (with a decidedly better table-side manner) remarked that I seemed to attract a lot of "readers" for clients. If this is a new term to you, it just means that, like me, they like to read what they sign before they sign it.
It may take several hours for them to read and sign the purchase agreement. But that is nothing compared with the paperwork that is thrown at home buyers when they reach the settlement table.
No doubt about it - the settlement papers are important. Your home is often the biggest investment you've ever made, and these are the terms and conditions, the ground rules for just how you will pay back the bank all of the money they are loaning you to buy the place. So while not trying to diminish all of the good reasons to read them, my strong preference is that my clients read them before the big day.
Sometimes, the lender gets everything to the title company a few days ahead of time. Then it's easy for the settlement guys to email everything to the clients. When I have determined readers and there is no chance of getting the actual documents ahead of time, I've gotten at least the boiler plate forms to them, so they need to make sure the blanks are properly filled in, but they will already be familiar with the content.
I really think that if many of the people who are in short sale and foreclosures today had read and understood the paperwork they signed, they might not be in their current unfortunate situations.
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