Story Time: Meeting a notary to close on a rental during pandemic

[Susan Tan]

I'm a SF Bay Area-based beginner real estate investor who invests in Ohio. This is my experience on closing a rental duplex.

I was in a N95 mask for 2.5 hours this afternoon. I signed docs w/ a notary in-person at the Wells Fargo bank and then walked to UPS store 1 mile away, waited in a long line keeping 6 feet away from everyone, and finally walked back home up a giant hill. The notary was confused about which form of acknowledgement to use because the Ohio mortgage docs are different than CA mortgage docs so I had to call title company, which is when they were about to close office in Ohio time, for help. Luckily, the title company manager picked up the phone to answer the notary's question. A giant pane of glass separated the notary and I at the bank. There were Lysol wipes for my hands before I entered my thumb print on the notary book.

With my package of mortgage docs, I had to walk past the first UPS store that was closest to my home because the line was a street block long and the 2nd UPS store had 3 people in front of me.

Rental property number 2 has closed today, the downpayment is wired, and it is now time to get my first major rehab project moving forward in Ohio w/ contractors scheduled to work on fixer upper property to make this rent ready for new tenants. This entire process of getting a mortgage took 2.5 months with lots of back-and-forth between the bank underwriters and title company and I. Now, the hard work of renovations is about to begin 2,000+ miles away in Ohio.

I feel very grateful for banks & UPS & other postal stores being open during a pandemic and all the bank & shipping employees are taking precautions to limit max number of people in the stores. The Wells Fargo bank in Oakland, CA even has motion-activated hand sanitizer.  I'm also grateful that I live in a walkable neighborhood where the bank, postal stores, grocery stores are 10 minutes walk away because I do not know how to drive.