Have you ever created a deed right there at the seller’s kitchen table? If so, did you bring along a typewriter or just use theirs? Or even better, did you hand write everything up or use one of those office supply store, fill-in-the-blank forms? What are you, some kind of chucklehead or somethin’?
Today, only chuckleheads do deeds on kitchen tables with typewriters or fill in the blank forms. This particular chucklehead is using a Powerbook and portable printer.
I first heard Wade Cook talk about driving around with a typewriter in the back seat twenty years ago. I never had the opportunity to use a typewriter because I came along with my sixteen-pound laptop in 1989 and that worked out much better. What do we think about doing this sort of thing today? Bad.
Kitchen table closings should be avoided at all costs
Sure, you can save five hundred bucks by creating and recording documents yourself, but once you do…you may as well paint a big red bull’s-eye right there on your butt and grab your ankles because you’d better believe, shots will be fired.
Some gurus today actually teach you how to do kitchen table closing as though it’s worth the five hundred bucks you’ll likely save. Trust me here, it ain’t. Kitchen table closings should be avoided and don’t forget that.
If you do kitchen table closings and create deeds when you have no business creating deeds, you can count on sellers beating a path to your door with their attorneys in tow. Here’s why…
Scam artists, traditionally, do kitchen table closings
Think about that. Do you really want to join that crowd? No, not in terms of scamming anyone, but certainly in how other professionals in the industry will look at you. You’ll be suspect. Your transactions will be scrutinized more closely by title companies who will likely have serious issues with everything you do.
You will automatically be assumed as being “one of those guys” who run around stealing deeds from little widow ladies. Worth five hundred bucks? No. But, and this is a huge but…we’re foreclosure investors who sometimes have no choice but to close at a moment’s notice. So what does that mean to us foreclosure guys?
We do kitchen table closings.
I’m writing this in a 737, seat 12B, sipping on a diet coke, and looking at my portable printer there in it’s handy dandy carrying case. I plan on cranking out one “quit claim” deed after another on that sucker this entire weekend.
Contradiction? Uh, no. It’s the nature of the beast, but something we need to address because what I said earlier about kitchen table closings not holding up in court is absolutely true. Here’s how they’re done…
When we do a kitchen table closing we let the sellers know and are sure they understand that today’s paperwork is only the beginning, and there will be plenty of things they’ll have to sign next week at the title company.
Sure, we get a deed. Sure, we get closing docs. And sure, we get everything else we need in case this is our last opportunity to work with this particular seller (they sometimes don’t show up “next week” even when they said they would). So, worst case scenario…we’ve got all the paperwork we need, and it’s all signed off.
Best case? We never use the darn stuff. That means we get everything signed up today, on the spot, at the kitchen table, and we call those our backup docs in case the seller flakes out later. We need to be protected, since we’re likely putting out a few bucks at the moment, but we don’t want to actually use those docs unless we have no other choice.
Again, let’s hope we don’t have to.
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