Posted by Jim Rayner on January 26, 2000 at 16:24:17:
Steve,
I have been partnering with family for 4 years and only recently have begun to do the financing alone as two things changed, one he retired and now lives with me, and we have now established an LLC through which we will now take title mostly for estate planning reasons although it does provide for my partner to remain as silent as he desires.
In the beginning I had a general Durable Power of Attorney (POA) that is specific only to real estate transactions. This enabled me to make offers that named us both without him having to sign every document. Once under agreement we would create a POA specific to the Deal so that I could then sign the Purchase and Sales Contract without my partner?s presence as well as initiate the 1003 Loan Application with our lender. This has worked very well at least 20 times now.
When it was time to close rather than have my partner travel 2400 miles round trip we found that every lender that we have dealt with had no problem with doing the closing in 2 locations within the same 24 hour window of time. The lenders have all required that we both sign the Mortgage and the Note ourselves but that all the other documents could be signed using the property specific POA. To accomplish this we paid a small additional fee to a second attorney or title company local to my partner to notarize my partner?s signature on the mortgage and the note. This also required the additional costs to over night these documents round trip.
We have now established an LLC which in massachusetts can take title directly and has eliminated these extra steps. Check with you lender regarding the form of the power of attorney they require. We found that they wanted it very specific as to exactly what forms could be signed using it. Hope this helps answer your questions.