Philadelphia Weekly

REAL ESTATE

Identify 'junk' forms at real estate closing

De-stressing your home purchase

By Inman News Feed

Add Comment | Comments: 0 | Posted Aug. 22, 2011

Requires detailed check the day before closing

Future Use

Borrower may need this information after closing

Place in folder for easy retrieval after closing

Weeding out junk documents: About half of the documents you receive can be signed quickly and pushed aside because they impart no useful information to you. Most are merely acknowledgements that a disclosure that the law requires lenders to provide has, in fact, been provided.

For example, the federal government mandates that borrowers must receive a Good Faith Estimate (GFE) disclosure within three days of submission of a loan application. At the closing the lender may require that the borrower sign another document acknowledging that the GFE was received within the required period.

Other documents acknowledge that the borrower has been told that the lender who made the loan may not service it, that the borrower has received the appraisal report, that payment delinquencies will be reported to a credit bureau, that the borrower has the right to have an attorney at the closing, and so on. A more complete list of "junk" disclosures will be included in the Web version of this article at www.mtgprofessor.com.

Next week: educational documents that borrowers should read well before closing.

The writer is professor of finance emeritus at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Comments and questions can be left at www.mtgprofessor.com.