Our office will remain open within the COVID-19 limitations. A description of our COVID-19 office policy is below.
In an effort to still transact business safely and conduct real estate closing transactions during the Covid-19 pandemic, we are offering 2 solutions at present. The first is for you and any co-borrower or spouse execute a Power of Attorney (recommended) allowing for our staff to execute the lender documents on your behalf, after we or the Lender have sent you an emailed copy of the closing documents for review, and you have had the opportunity to review the content with counsel via telephone. At that time, you would email our staff to confirm that the documents may be signed and returned to the Lender for Funding.
The second option allows for the signing to be done by you, in our office. We would ask that any attending party wash their hands before entering the office in one of the restrooms located in our building, in the hall area, which are located just outside of the office on the 2nd floor in Chapel Hill and inside of the main office in Raleigh. I would also ask that you use your own pen, which shall be wiped using an antibacterial wipe or sanitizer prior to commencing the signing.
Anyone who has traveled within the past 2 weeks to areas that are worst affected in the US or elsewhere will not be permitted to enter the office. We also are limiting attendance to only the borrowers, without agents, who may attend via remote/telephone audio or facetime if desired and may review your CD with you via telephone, in advance, and with sellers coming in separately, if applicable, also without agents, to keep proper social distance and further limit contact between all staff and clients. While we love and respect our agent referral sources, this is solely for their protection, your protection and our staff, and we hope that this solution is temporary for only the near future.
Upon arriving for closing, the attorney will provide a highlighted loan package and briefly explain the legal content of the documents and how they may be executed. Two forms of Identification will need to be photographed by you and emailed to our staff (copied here as well) so that we have valid ID prior to you starting to sign. Once emailed, the attorney will provide all closing documents, and you may proceed with signing and/or initialing, and dating where applicable, each document. Upon completion, the package will be left in the conference room, and the attorney will verify that all pages have been signed properly, after which the client is free to leave. If the client is required to wire or send funds to close, in advance of the closing, then he/she should arrange to send the wire prior to appearing at our office, so that confirmation of the bank being open for business is available before we take the time to sign forms. any copies of documents provided to the client after closing will be sent via a secure link, in an email, which has been our practice prior this time.
While this may be difficult or inconvenient, we feel it is necessary in this environment to do our part to slow the transmission of Covid-19 and hope that these policies will prevent further spreading of the virus through our offices while still completing the closing process. Just let us know your preferred means of conducting the signing, but please be aware that the policy could change at any time, leaving only the power of attorney option available, and therefore, I would urge you to execute a "POA" in advance of closing and have your lender approve its content, just in case that option is necessary.
Will signings and other documents that require multiple witnesses and notary are currently postponed until our firm is able to ensure that signings can be done in a safe manner, with the additional 3 required staff members to witness your signing(s). In the event of an emergency situation, we would be willing to consider requests on a case by case basis.
