Real estate purchasers may place a deposit into an escrow account prior to purchasing a property.

Once you purchase the property, however, you may have to pay amounts into escrow as part of your mortgage loan obligations. In that regard, an escrow account is a trust account established in your name to pay obligations such as property insurance and property taxes on real estate. It may be set up when you take out a mortgage. You may pay these amounts along with your mortgage payment each month.

The lender will determine the monthly amount by adding your estimated property insurance, property taxes and other items that may be paid on an annual basis and dividing them by 12. The lender will then pay the bills for you when they are due.

Escrow accounts are set up to guarantee that items such as insurance and taxes are paid in a timely fashion. They ensure that enough money is available to pay for these items when they are due so that you avoid the potential of lapsed insurance coverage or unpaid or late taxes.

Escrow accounts make it easier to budget and pay real estate expenses by spreading the cost over 12 months. That way, you don’t have to worry about raising funds for or making large lump sum payments during the year.

Special assessments, such as supplemental taxes, typically are not included in amounts that are escrowed.

Escrow accounts decrease mortgage rates and down payment amounts because they lower the risk to the lender and the lender’s investors that taxes and insurance payments will not be made.

Last week, I provided a general overview of some of the compelling reasons for outsourcing at E-Solutions Integrator.  Outsourcing contracts need to be carefully negotiated as problems can have a huge impact on the company that outsources.

Lawyers tend to use the same  boilerplate provisions despite the type of contract.  That can be a killer in an outsourcing transaction.  For example, one provision that should be carefully reviewed is the force majeure provision.

Force majeure literally means “greater force.”  Force majeure excuses a party from liability or from performing its obligation if some unforeseen event or circumstance beyond that party’s control prevents it from performing as required under the contract.  Thus, force majeure clauses commonly cover Acts of God, such as natural disasters, war, strikes or labor unrest, riots, and the failure of third parties (e.g., subcontractors, suppliers) to perform their obligations to the contracting party.

When negotiating an agreement to outsource on behalf of a client, one should read and limit the list of categories under which force majeure may be claimed.  Sometimes, the vendor’s contract provides includes an unnecessarily broad list.  Additionally, one should limit the duration of any enforced delay.  Consider how long a force majeure event lasts.  Forever?  If so, no one will provide the service.

A force majeure event for one of the vendor’s other customers should not be a force majeure event for your client.  Further, one should make a distinction between a supplier and a subcontractor, the latter typically being more easily and quickly replaced.  Depending on the type of contract, one should consider whether the failure of a supplier should be a force majeure event.

Force majeure events should not include power or equipment failures.  The vendor should have immediate backups when these events occur.  Similarly, software defects should not be force majeure events.

When a force majeure event occurs, it should not relieve the vendor from implementing its disaster recovery plan.  In fact, it must do so when such an event occurs.  The client should have its own business continuation plan as well.  The client should have insurance If the risk can’t be minimized in a particular area.

The Black Book of Outsourcing: How to Manage the Changes, Challenges, and Opportunities and The Outsourcing Handbook: How to Implement a Successful Outsourcing Process are good places to start when considering an outsourcing arrangement.

When I was with Day, Berry & Howard, I negotiated large, complex outsourcing contracts for a number of Fortune 500 companies.  For example, in one instance, it was more efficient for a pharmaceutical company to outsource its help desk to an expert provider of such services rather than to manage and maintain the resources necessary to operate the help desk function in-house.  In another instance, a bank outsourced its data processing function to an expert provider of data processing services for lenders.

This expertise I gained came in handy at E-Solutions Integrator, Inc. (e-SI). because it helped us to grow much more rapidly on limited resources. In the early days of e-SI, when we landed a project, we needed to quickly add software developers.  However, we didn’t want to hire full-time employees for a variety of reasons.  This was because the Internet - and our business - was growing so rapidly that it was hard to predict our needs and we didn’t want to take on employees we might not need in a couple of months when a project ended.  So we used the leverage of contractors and ultimately, we engaged hundreds of individuals  - in addition to our own core employees.

Outsourcing worked for us.  We hired contract organizations that provided employees in India.  This provided the flexibility we needed and increased our margins, as software developers in India cost significantly less than in North America.  Yet, we did have concerns and were careful to manage them.  These concerns included quality control, security issues and time constraints from having our resources on the other wide of the planet.

Broadly defined, outsourcing is subcontracting a process to a third party.  That process could involve a product or a service or part of either.  It could also involve a specific business function or a non-core competency of the organization.  We outsourced overseas, which technically, is called “offshoring.”

The Outsourcing Center is an Internet portal for information on methods to outsource information technology.  The Outsourcing Institute is a professional organization dedicated to outsourcing.  For individuals in the U.S. the Contract Employees Handbook is focused on helping contract employees manage their careers.

As it was, at e-SI, we grew and survived the Internet downturn because of the flexibility of being able to outsource.  Ultimately, though, we opened our own offices in India as our business prospered and our projects and customer list expanded.

Getting a mortgage can be a confusing process.  There’s a lot of paperwork and there are many loan programs to choose from.  In this post, I’ll provide an overview of the mortgage process and what you should expect from a mortgage consultant.

Goals

The mortgage process is substantially similar whether you are purchasing or refinancing a property. In both cases, your mortgage consultant should start by asking questions and listening to your goals.  That way, he or she can help you achieve your goals.  However, too many mortgage consultants start by telling you what to do based upon what is most profitable to them.

Your consultant should ask a number of questions, starting with, “What type of property would you like to purchase or refinance?”

• If you want to make a purchase, your consultant will want to know…
  • What is your price range?   If you don’t know, he or should should be able to help you determine the price range for which you qualify.
  • How much money would you like to invest, if any?  Despite the credit crunch, there are still loan options that do not require significant down payments.
  • How much money do you have for closing costs and prepaid expenses, if any?
  • Is the monthly payment amount important to you?  If so, how much would you be comfortable paying on your mortgage each month?
  • How long do you intend to own the property?
  • Are you working with a real estate broker or sales agent?  If not, the consultant should be able to refer you to someone in the area in which you wish to purchase.

• If you want to refinance, your consultant will want to know…
  • What are you trying to achieve in pursuing a refinancing?
  • How long do you intend to own the property?
  • What is the estimated value of the property?

By listening to your goals, your mortgage consultant can help you determine the loan programs best suited to achieve them and to meet your needs.

Prequalification and Preapproval

Prequalification and preapproval only occur in the purchase process, so if you are refinancing, you can skip this step.  In some locales, prequalification is the norm and in others, home sellers and real estate brokers and agents will require you to be preapproved.  You do not need to have a specific property in mind to get either a prequalification or a preapproval.  However, in both cases, your personal mortgage consultant sahould assist you.

• Prequalification - Prequalification is an estimate of your purchasing power.  In short, it is an estimate of the price you can afford to purchase a property.  Your mortgage consultant will order your credit report and ask questions about your employment and income.
• Preapproval - Preapproval means that based on the information you provide, a lender issues a loan approval with conditions.  Your mortgage consultant will order your credit report and ask questions about your employment, income and assets.  Depending on your goals, he or she may provide you with a checklist of information required for a preapproval.  Once your mortgage consultant collects the information, he or she then submits the information to a lender (or, if he or she works for a lender, it is processed through the lender’s system).  The lender will issue a preapproval with conditions that will vary depending on the property and on you and your circumstances.

Getting preapproved is a more thorough process than prequalification, but one is not necessarily better than the other.  It depends upon what is the norm in the place where you want to purchase a property.

Application

Your mortgage consultant will put together and submit a loan application and related documents and submit them to a lender.

• If you previously have been preapproved to purchase a property, you’ll most likely only have to update the information you provided when you applied for a preapproval.
• If you are refinancing or previously were prequalified to purchase a property, your consultant will ask you questions about your employment, income and assets.  Depending on your goals, he or she may provide you with a checklist of information required to complete the loan application.  Your consultant will order your credit report if it has not previously been ordered.

Depending on the type of property, the loan program and your personal circumstances, you may have to provide documentation supporting your income, assets or employment. Your mortgage consultant will advise you of the requirements. He or she should guide you along every step of the process and answer all your questions.

Processing and Underwriting

When your loan application and related documents are complete, the mortgage broker or lender’s processing center begins work on your loan.  This can include verifying your income and assets, ordering an appraisal of the property’s value and ordering a title search from the lender’s attorney to make sure the property has clear title, among other items.  If you’re working with a mortgage broker, the broker’s processors will transmit the loan package to the lender, who then begins the underwriting process.

In underwriting, the lender will evaluate the information that has been collected about you and your property.   Lenders have thousands of loan programs for residential and commercial purchases, refinances, construction or investment.  Therefore, the underwriting criteria will vary for each loan and according to your personal circumstances.  However, some factors the lender will consider in its evaluation are the value of the property and whether it believes you can repay the loan in a timely manner.

Upon making a satisfactory underwriting determination, the lender will issue a formal loan approval, known as a mortgage commitment letter or conditional approval letter.  The letter will state the terms and conditions under which the lender is willing to make the loan.  The conditions will vary depending on the property and your personal circumstances.  A typical condition, though, is that the property must have an appropriate amount of insurance.

The processor typically will work with your mortgage consultant and the lender to satisfy the conditions set forth in the commitment letter.  Once the conditions are satisfied, the loan will be ready for closing.

The Closing

At the closing, you will sign various documents that allow your loan to be put in place.  These include a mortgage (evidencing the lender’s interest in your property), a promissory note or mortgage note (your promise to repay the loan according to specific terms and conditions) and other similar documents.  If you are purchasing a property, the seller will transfer title to it to you at the same time.

At the close of the transaction, the mortgage is recorded in the land records of the city or county (Where the recording occurs varies depending on the state in which the property is located.).

Post-Closing

Good service does not end with the close of your transaction.  If you have any questions or concerns in the future regarding your mortgage, a good mortgage consultant will be there to assist you.