All Forum Posts by: Jason Chambers

Awesome! We needed this!

Have you checked out El Paso Investors Club (EPIC) or the El Paso Real Estate Investors Association? EPIC meets at the Hilton near UTEP and REIA meets at V Realty on the west side. Both have been great places to network. EPIC also has a monthly deal night. They are both definitely worth checking out.

I think a military forum would be a great idea. It would be a great place to discuss the particularities of being in the military and being an investor. I get questions from my military peers about my experiences as an investor/landlord, especially when it comes to using the VA. The VA is always a hot topic as is real estate finance in general. Military members have access to a wealth programs like the VA but I find that many of us simply don't have the information necessary to be more effective at using it. You have my vote for a military forum! @Joshua Dorkin

Thanks for all the replies. We checked with the agency requiring the notarized documents and they won't accept an online notary. They are requiring that the documentation have a wet signature even if it's just a copy of it. They won't accept digital signatures. Because of the nature of my work, sometimes my deployments are short notice. This was one of those times. I got a call that I had 24 hours to get on a plane. Didn't have time to get a POA for my wife. I'm also not in a country with a notary or attorney that could help and not on a base. Luckily we have a good relationship with the title company and we were able to close just before I went to the airport. The situation I'm in now is to secure funding for the rehab. After having gone through this process of considering online notaries, I'm actually quite surprised it's not a common way of conducting business. Everything about the process with the online notaries I've researched seem very secure and you have to present identification via digital means (scan) and also present it when on webcam. One of the notaries is actually developing an online closing platform for real estate deals. How awesome would that be? Given how much I travel that would be a game changer for us!

Yes, the property is in Texas. I'm actually getting funding through my military retirement plan but it requires signatures from both me and my wife. We did the initial funding for the deal through our hard money lender so that's taken care of. For this flip we decided it would cost a lot less to just use money we already had stashed away and essentially pay ourselves back. Uncle Sam put a bit of a monkey wrench in our plans with this last second deployment I'm on. We're going to call a rep with the retirement plan to see if they will accept online notary. The concept seems promising but I think unfortunately it's so new that people would be hesitant to accept it. You go through the usual ID verification but you meet the notary virtually through a webcam and use digital signatures and an electronic notary "stamp". I'll post here tomorrow if we are successful. Maybe it could be useful to other investors that travel quite a bit and have trouble finding an available notary. Fingers crossed. 

Thanks for the replies. I'm out of the country right now and the nearest notary is 4 hours away at the embassy. Given my work schedule and the holidays it makes it tough to plan a trip that far. What we are trying to do is set up some funding for a flip on a house we closed on the morning I left to come here (last second military deployment). We bought the home under our LLC but we need to secure the funding for the flip personally.

I've found Notary Cam and Notarize. Notary Cam has a few more reviews than Notarize and apparently they are building an online closing platform designed for real estate investors. It seems that they have had some success in notarizing real estate documents. I just don't trust reviews and don't know anyone with personal experience notarizing documents via a webcam. 

@Chris Mason I've heard the same about any of us commissioned guys being able to provide notary services but we are on a small team away from most of the support we usually have available. No one here has a stamp and our nearest administration support is hours away and currently on half day schedule because of the holidays. 

I did find two services that provide a notary via webcam. They are Notarize which also has a smartphone app and another called NotaryCam. Both claim to use electronic notary stamps in addition to electronic signatures which is something I use already anyway.

Unfortunately, I'm stuck here for the next couple of months (surprise, cancel Christmas) and everyday that passes is costing me money. Otherwise I would wait until I get back. I guess it could be worth a try. For $25 even if it doesn't work I'm no worse off than when I started.

Has anyone here tried an online notary? I'm in the military and had to leave on a deployment with only a day's notice (it's so time to retire!). We were right in the middle of a deal and need a notary to firm up some rehab funding. Unfortunately, there isn't a notary available where I am. Any suggestions?

Thanks, 

Jason

@Carlos Martinez we also took advantage of a VA loan when buying our first house. It's a great tool to use, especially getting started in real estate. I think deciding between a duplex and triplex comes down to two things, cash flow and whether or not you plan to live on the property. Considering the cost of the mortgage, insurance, taxes, and monthly maintenance, which place brings in more cash? Also consider if the rents you charge would cover expenses if you were to live in one of the units. I think the VA has an owner/occupant requirement anyway. We are actually in the process of downsizing and moving into a duplex we purchased. The rent on the other side of the duplex covers expenses and will allow us to live almost rent and mortgage free.

@Elijah F. I think where I missed you is that the key component to all of this is time. Compound interest is calculated on a monthly basis and amortized in such a way that it is paid at the beginning of the life of the mortgage. Simple interest is calculated daily based on the remaining balance. Either one of those forms of interest is irrelevant when thinking in terms of time. Yes, over a long period of time the difference between the two can be negligible if you are making minimum payments. The key to what we do is 1. the mortgage is eliminated, 2. what we pay in simple interest is much cheaper allowing us to affect much more principle every month for the same payment, 3. and the biggest money saver is the fact that having the ability to pay down principle much faster dramatically reduces the amount of time to pay off the debt. 5-7 years of simple interest vs 30 years of compound. It's all about time. Much less time having to pay and a lower interest rate means exponentially less money paid in interest. Simple vs compound interest isn't even in the same ball park when it comes to time. In my case, it saves us more than $300,000 in interest payments and 23-25 years less time stuck in a mortgage.

There are other ways to do this same thing (double payments, paying down large chunks of principle using smaller lines of credit, etc) this is just the quickest most direct means to eliminate as much interest as possible.