Mortgage Matters

Wesley Knight 0:00
This is a Kun V studios original program. The content of this program does not reflect the views or opinions of 91.5 jazz and more the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, or the Board of Regents of the Nevada System of Higher Education.

Roland Daniels 0:43
Good morning, Las Vegas. Welcome to mortgage matters. I'm your host, Roland Daniels, a certified mortgage advisor with Geneva financial. My NMLS number is 355859, and our company, NMLS number is 42056, and I'm here this morning, as always, with my fantastic co host. Heidi Griffith, good morning. Heidi, good

Heidi Griffith 1:07
morning. How are you? I am doing awesome. Happy Sunday. Happy Sunday. Everybody. Happy Sunday. I am. Heidi Griffith, I also a mortgage advisor and your Director of Client Services. My NMLS number is 2247754, we're excited to be with you this Sunday morning. We're gonna just do a quick shout out to our amazing engineer. Wes for keeping us sounding great every single week he does. So we've got a really good, informative show lined up today. What people think about buying or selling a home Title and Escrow? It's really just not. The first thing that comes to mind is it? It is not, it's not, but they're absolutely incent essential to the process, right? Definitely. Yeah. So from making sure your ownership is protected to ensuring everything closes smoothly and securely, the work done behind the scenes by Title and Escrow professionals is what makes magic really happen. It does, and we are super excited to be joined by two amazing guests to bring this world to life. We've got Brian Holland and Desiree Holmes in studio with us. They're from Stuart. Title, yes. So before we jump in, let's just take a really quick look at what we've got upcoming. Right row, yeah.

Roland Daniels 2:13
So we have the all about Down Payment Assistance, which is Saturday, April the 26th it is an online class from 10am to 11am this is where we break it down. This is where

Heidi Griffith 2:25
we talk because a lot of people have heard about down payment programs. There's a lot of not great myths floating around about them. You know from you have to be a first time home buyer. And first time home buyer doesn't mean that you've never owned a home. In many instances, first time home buyer, means you haven't owned a home in the last three years. And on, on, on a deed

Roland Daniels 2:44
or title, and every week, we hear that there are no funds available, no especially

Heidi Griffith 2:49
right now, we're hearing that a lot, that all of the down payment funds are gone. That is not the case. We actually still are working with about 16 different programs, aren't we? We are. We're working with that just so it really just it. It kind of bust myths. We go over what Down Payment Assistance looks like. We talk about credit, we talk about everything, and then we talk about all 16 programs that we offer. Then we actually have the Pap, the homeownership that's our month long. Our monthly workshop that we do, it is with CPLC, that first Saturday of every month it is, and that's a really intensive learning experience. For a lot of people, it lasts from 830 in the morning until 3pm Yeah, around three. And we work with HUD certified counselors, and they'll present a lot of the class. Roland, you teach the mortgage portion, I

Roland Daniels 3:34
do. And most importantly, it makes you eligible for the wish funds, which are available. And what are the wish funds? It's a four to one match. So if you have, say, $7,000 in the bank, they'll give you another, say 28,000 if

Heidi Griffith 3:48
you're qualified, yeah. And also by attending, you actually will then qualify for all of the other down payment assistance programs that we offer. So you get your certificate, you're gonna always get fed, because we like to feed people. And we have, we have snacks because, guess who likes snacks? You do? I love snacks. So

Roland Daniels 4:04
if you're ready to learn more, get signed up for a class, or you just want to talk through your options, whether you're buying refinancing or figuring out what is next. That's 702-210-2057 that's 702-210-2057 and you can also find us on our brand new Facebook page, mortgage matters radio, that's right, right, yeah. So now let's get in today's conversation. Let's do it so we are excited to welcome two professionals who play an essential role in the home buying journey. First up is Desiree Holmes, an escrow officer with more than 21 years of experience in the industry, originally from California, she's called Las Vegas home since 2001 Desiree specializes in everything from resale and refinance to commercial land. 10, 31x, Exchanges and FIRPTA transactions. We'll have to go through that and tell the listeners what is FERPA. She's a wife, she's a mother, grandmother, and when she's not handling escrows, you can probably catch her enjoying something Disney related or spending time with her family. She knows. She's known for being organized, detail oriented, and has received numerous awards for her work and her dedication. Hey,

Desiree Holmes 5:30
Heidi, thank you so much for having me here today. I don't know. I felt like I just got like, a Oscar or something, like you are intro. I was like, Oh my God. Who are we talking about? Wait a minute.

Heidi Griffith 5:44
Now, Brian. I don't know if I can do such a good job, but we're going to give it a shot. Why not wing it? And we also have Brian Holland in the studio with us. Brian is the Senior Business Development Manager with Stewart title. He started his career in 2003 with Nevada title, and later served as sales manager at Old Republic Title from 2017 to 2022 he's been a member of the National Association of real estate brokers for over 13 years, and he was named one of the top 25 American real estate professionals by narep in 2018 that's awesome. That's African American real estate professional. That is correct. Oh, and let's wait, hang he's not just a title pro. He also has this black belt, and he's a long time motorcyclist, motorcyclist with over 45 so you've got your black belt.

Brian Holland 6:29
Yes, I did acquire a black belt in Thai Kimball, jiu jitsu many years ago.

Heidi Griffith 6:34
That is so impressive. Thank you. I can barely walk a straight line sometimes. That's very impressive. That's all

Roland Daniels 6:39
right, I only made it to brown belt. Oh, sorry, I

Desiree Holmes 6:43
was a brownie. Does that count? I was a brownie as well. Okay, we're in. So it does count. It does count. We

Heidi Griffith 6:49
have a secret handshake, so let's, let's talk. I know title doesn't sound like this is going to be a really exciting show, I promise you, if you've bought or sold a home, if you plan on buying or selling a home. This is the common denominator every single time, and it's just one of those things that doesn't get talked about a lot. We do talk about title insurance. We talk about the Title and Escrow process in that path to home ownership workshop that we teach, but it's one of those things that gets glazed over in a lot of scenarios. You talk about realtors. We talk about lenders. We don't usually, you know, all people really know is, this is where the earnest money deposit goes, this magical place. Well,

Brian Holland 7:28
what I like to explain to people, especially when they have absolutely no real knowledge of title or title insurance, I like to just let them know, to let them off the hook. Whether you're talking about car insurance, health insurance, pet insurance, life insurance. There's nothing fun, sexy or cool about insurance of any genre, so we're going to do the best we can with this conversation today. But at Stuart title, the important thing to know is Stewart title has been doing business in this great country of ours for over 100 and now 32 years. Wow. We are one of the founding title companies in the country, we are a direct sale, meaning that all insurance for the entire country is written by one of four title companies. Even though, keep in mind there are over 130 title and or escrow companies doing business in Clark County today, there's only four companies, Stuart title being one of them that write all insurance for the entire country. So yes, there is, there is not a real estate transaction that we have not handled, dissected, figured out and and proceed with. Wow. So whether it's land, residential, commercial, we do it all. And so how long has Stuart been in business? 132 years? Wow, yes, yeah. Okay,

Heidi Griffith 8:47
so now we know something about Stewart title. Let's talk about Title escrow, all that Desiree. I know that you are the expert in this field. Tell me about Title and Escrow and what that looks like.

Desiree Holmes 8:59
So title and escrow, and you know, like you said, it's it's not common, and a lot of people don't know about it. And even when I go to try to pick my career, it's never in the drop down. I don't exist. My job does not exist. But basically, simply, once the buyers and sellers have gone into contract, we are provided that contract, and it is our responsibility to act on those written instructions impartially as the neutral third parties. That's

Heidi Griffith 9:28
the big one. I want everybody here that title in escrow is a neutral third neutral third

Desiree Holmes 9:33
party. So it doesn't matter if, like, my loan officer sent me the deal, or if it's an agent I have a relationship with I'm going to represent every single person in that transaction equally and make sure that everything is handled accurately, legally, the correct way.

Heidi Griffith 9:51
So when you receive a purchase agreement, a contract, so you go out, you're buying a house, the buyer and seller of negotiation. Created everything the seller off, you know, accepts the buyer's offer. We've got an accepted contract now, then that's sent over to the title company, right? And so when you have that contract, when you say you're neutral third party, I love that explanation, because that means that you're just following the words from the contract,

Desiree Holmes 10:19
The written instruction provided to me that both the buyer and seller have agreed upon. Okay?

Heidi Griffith 10:24
So you're not saying I'm gonna hold the seller's money or I'm gonna hold the buyer's money. You're doing whatever that contract Correct. Okay, okay, so now you get the contract. What happens after you get the contract? Buyers now doing his home inspection and doing all of that good stuff? What happens?

Desiree Holmes 10:39
Yeah, so that's when the fun happens, and I'll go ahead and open escrow, and as a buyer, you'll hear from me immediately that day when I open escrow, because I'm going to reach out to you and send you our wire instructions. I like to go the extra mile, because wire fraud is so prevalent right now in our industry. So this is my first interaction with the buyers, I'm gonna send them emails from me. I'm gonna pick up the phone and I'm gonna reach out to them. We do send our wire instructions through a secured site, but even though we're sending them secure we still ask that our buyers call and verify with us. We ask that our agents let their clients know up front, hey, this is your escrow officer. This is her phone number. She's safe. It's okay to talk to her, because they don't know who I am. You know, they don't know if I'm the actual person. And I can't tell you how many times I've actually gotten those buyers on the phone, and I'm like, Okay, have you walked through the steps, you know, for our secured site? And they're like, No, I kind of just wanted to call you first and make sure you're real. And this was legit. Everything's safe,

Heidi Griffith 11:41
and you know, that's something that we tell people a lot, is, if you aren't sure, call the number from the website. Call the number that your real estate professional has, right? Because there is a lot of fraud. And I'm glad that you brought that up, because wire fraud is a real thing. I've talked about it from time to time. Roland just talked about it from time to time. It's one of those things that when you're sending your earnest money deposit, and remember, earnest money deposit is that depositing good faith that you're going to put down on your property, it's usually about 1% of the sales price, and then that gets wired to the title company. So that's going to Desiree, she's going to send you the email. It's usually going to be a security email, I know, with Stewart, it's always security. And you know, as an added step that we kind of tell people is just give the title company a call when you're in that wiring process to verify all of the numbers and the routing numbers and everything match, right?

Desiree Holmes 12:33
Better safe than sorry. Once wires are sent, you cannot get them back. They try and, you know, you can, you know, file claims, but they you don't get the money back. I'm going to tell you, it's so rare that they're actually able to track down these wires and get the money back to the client. So just take an extra moment, pick up the phone call. Call your escrow officer, verify. Because also, when I'm talking to my buyers, I'm not just verifying the information I sent them. I'm letting them know, hey, if anyone else calls you during this transaction and ask you to send money anyplace else that is fraudulent, I said I'm the only person that should ever ask for funds, and this is the only account you should ever send funds to. So I'm also giving them more details like that, because

Heidi Griffith 13:17
a lot of people don't understand how wire fraud works.

Roland Daniels 13:21
So will the buyer get wiring instructions, let's say, from their realtor or their loan officer or just just

Desiree Holmes 13:29
me, just me, and that's why I make it clear when I'm speaking to them on the phone, no one else in this transaction, regardless if it's your lender, your agent, anyone should ask you for funds. This is the only place you're gonna wire money. Yeah, that's

Heidi Griffith 13:44
a great point, because with wire fraud, there's a lot of unfortunately, really advanced criminals out there that could send an email. It could be your picture on the email right, your signature, your email, your telephone number, everything looks like it's kosher. Hey, you know Desiree, that's, yeah, that's who they said that was going to be sending this stuff. My suggestion is always calling verify, double verify, great, great. Because once that money is gone, it's gone, it goes to the space, and it's not the title company's fault. It's, realistically, it's just been intercepted in Absolutely.

Desiree Holmes 14:19
Because a lot of people don't realize when you send a wire. A lot of people is like, did you get it? Is instantaneously. It goes from your bank through the Federal Reserves to our bank, right? So, and that's why the only way for us to track a wire is like, sometimes, if they don't show up in a timely manner, we ask them for the Federal reference number. That's the only way to track a wire. That means the Federal Reserve's actually done their job, pushed that wire through, and now we have a way to track it, you know, so it they don't show up instantaneously. They do take a little while, sometimes an hour, sometimes a few hours. Just take depends on your banking institution. But with wires, you can never be too safe. That's what I'm gonna say. If, if our your. Listeners today, take nothing away from this. Just know wire fraud is prevalent. The they are very smart. Criminals are not dumb. These real criminals are super smart, super savvy. They know what they're doing. This is their job. This is their job to be a criminal. So we have to stay on top and be better than them, yeah,

Heidi Griffith 15:21
because it would really stink to lose your earnest money. But let's just say you were buying a $400,000 house. I wired you $4,000 but even more than that, what about when I'm wiring my closing funds? And that could be, you know, 20, 3050, you know, could

Desiree Holmes 15:37
that number and for buyers? Now, as we know, it's hard to come up with, you were just talking about down payment assistance programs. It's hard to come up with the money to get them to the spot to purchase these homes. So if you lose a $5,000 earnest money deposit, the earnest money deposit counts towards your closing costs. Now you may be short $5,000 that you don't have extra to come up to buy this house. That's great. And you can lose at all. Yeah,

Heidi Griffith 16:01
that's a great point. Great point. Oh, and since Brian said that title insurance wasn't so sexy, let's talk about title insurance. Let's talk about what that looks like, because, you know, it's not and title insurance is very important, and people just don't understand the ins and outs. Let's talk about why are title insurance policies put into place? This is not a lenders policy. This isn't for the lender, right? Yeah, well,

Desiree Holmes 16:23
there's two title insurance policy, so you have an owner's policy and you have a lender's policy, so the lender's policy does protect the lender only, which people get confused about that, because buyers do think that they're covered by their lender policy and they're not the owner's policy does protect the owner and the buyer as well, though, so the buyers are still covered, so everybody can rest at peace. Everybody is covered and protected in a transaction, and that's why it's so important to get title insurance. You don't technically need a real estate agent if you found your buyer, and you don't technically need a lender if you have a cash buyer, but you're always going to want to go through a title on escrow to ensure that everything's being handled the way it needs to be. If you just go down and anybody could technically record a deed, Clark County will record anything if you just go down and record a deed now, you have an uninsured deed on title. You're clouding your chain of title. You're going to have issues when you go to sell or refinance at home later. So it's always better just to do it the correct way the right time. Okay,

Heidi Griffith 17:24
so what is title insurance? What is an owner's policy? Right? Yeah, protect you from so the

Desiree Holmes 17:29
owner's policy, like I said, protects the sellers and the buyers and it we basically what we do is our title officers, and that's not my job. So I'm not an expert in that. In that department, again, I'm an escrow officer, but they do extensive search searches on their property. They look for liens, judgment, you know, deeds of trust, UCCS, uniform commercial codes, in any kind of anything popping up. We're looking at the taxes. We're looking at the vesting. Who's on title, you know, are both people on title? Are they? We're looking at if they're married, we're looking at if they're in trust. LLCs has somebody passed. That's on title, right? You know. So a preliminary title report has a lot of information in there, and that's what we're protecting. So we're ensuring that we're transferring their property over to the new owner, free and clear of any liens and conferences, other than maybe the deed of trust that they're getting with their new lender, right,

Heidi Griffith 18:30
right? And so what that kind of looks like if you're buying a home is you've got a seller that you're purchasing a home from, and in the preliminary title search, right? Your realtor is going to actually get a report of all of that, and it's going to kind of outline this. This lien is on the property. It could be as little as the mortgage that's currently on the property, right? But then they're going to be looking for any back taxes. They're going to be looking for a mechanics lien. And what, what a mechanic lien is just, basically, you've got a contractor that comes out, right?

Desiree Holmes 19:00
Yeah. It could be a pool. It could be anything, you know, it basically means you had some kind of construction, or somebody come do something on your property, and they think that you didn't pay them,

Heidi Griffith 19:09
right? And so, you know, let's just say you closed on a transaction and it had, you know, the the guide never got paid for, I don't know, fixing your roof. Let's just say, never got paid, and now you've closed on the transaction. It's your home, and the guy says, Wait a minute, I didn't get my money, and tries to file a lien on the property. That's kind of one of those things, absolutely. Yeah. Okay, so, yeah, so it's so

Desiree Holmes 19:32
mechanics liens are going to be covered under the lender policy, because that's more of an extended policy, okay, so, um, mechanics liens aren't really covered under the owner's house. Okay, yeah. But

Heidi Griffith 19:46
so you've got those two in place that are gonna, yeah,

Desiree Holmes 19:48
exactly. So between both, they're gonna be fully protected. What about

Heidi Griffith 19:52
questions about how you're gonna take title? So I know that real estate agents, we ask clients, you know how they want to be. Vested. What does that look like?

Desiree Holmes 20:01
So there's many different ways that you can hold title. I feel like the most important thing to know about holding title is a don't ever put minors on title with you, because I have seen that pop up numerous times. Minors cannot sign legal documents, so then you are stuck not being able to sell or refinance your property until that minor is of age. So that's just the first thing. I like to let people know about that. But in terms of holding title, I think the most important thing out there is avoiding probate. Okay, that's the thing we see happen a lot, and people think they're on title and we're they're like, Well, we're both on title. I don't understand. Why is it going to probate. We're both on title. We're both on title. I hear that all the time. It doesn't matter if there's multiple people on title, it matters how you're vested. So when you go on title, you're going to have your name, you're going to have your marital status. Okay? So in my case, it'd be Desiree Holmes, a married woman as her so on separate property. Or if my husband was on title with me, it'd be Desiree and Dominic. You know, husband and wife is joint tenant. So as joint tenants is the part that's important there. Or as joint tenants with rights of survivorship that's built, yeah, those are the two ways you can hold title that avoid probate if you're just on there, like Desiree and Heidi and we own this house together, and even if we put, I'm an undivided 25% interest, and you're it's not gonna matter. If we don't have the proper vesting, it's still gonna go to probate. It's different, of course, like if you're in an LLC, or if you're in a trust, you know that's a different scenario. And we're gonna review those documents to see who's the manager of the LLC, who's allowed to sign on behalf of the LLC, who's the trustees of the trust. Has the original trustees pass? Who's the successor trustees of the trust? You know, we can go on for days for that. That's another I'm

Heidi Griffith 21:53
glad that you brought that up, because I get a lot of questions, and I've been in transactions where folks needed to send their trust documents to escrow. And you know, we sometimes we're cautious about sending our documents. I get that, but if you are in a trust, you need to see all of those documents, don't you?

Desiree Holmes 22:10
Yes, and a trust book, generally, when somebody gets a trust, it's like 200 pages. It's this big book, and I understand why they're wary to send it to us, because it has medical power of attorneys in there, and your personal items that you're you know who you're leaving things to. I don't need all that. If you have a trust cert, sometimes we can take it that's a condensed version of your trust. Other than that, I need from the first page, where it outlines the trust name, all the way up to the notary section where you've signed. That's generally around 20 pages, okay? And then I don't need all the rest of that. I don't need to see the will. None of it, you know. So I get why people think that, just because so much personal stuff is in the entire trust book. But we're not asking for all that, like I said. We're just asking for those first few pages, just to let us know who's allowed to act on behalf of the trust.

Heidi Griffith 23:03
Good to know and trust are important, by the way, people, yes, I highly suggest folks having trust. Well, awesome. Anything else you want to add? I mean,

Desiree Holmes 23:13
there's a lot of things we could talk about. Circle back on FIRPTA. What is FIRPTA? Oh, okay, yes, so FERPA is like, if there's a foreign seller involved, so the United States government considers it the buyer's responsibility to know if you're going to buy from a foreign entity. In that case, the IRS expects the buyers to fill out certain documents and have those documents submitted to us to collect the amount, which is 15% of the purchase price. And I know people like to debate this. This is a hot topic of how much we're going to collect. Some people think it's 10% some people think it's of the proceeds they get, not of the purchase price. It is of the purchase price, the buyers don't know what the proceeds are going to be for the sellers to determine it off the proceeds. And the IRS is telling these buyers, if you don't collect this money from the sellers, we're going to hold you responsible, and we're going to come and get that 15% from you. So you do want to collect the 15% of the purchase price they may not always pay that. You know, when they file their taxes or their CPA, they could get a refund, but that is what we are going to collect, standard, right?

Heidi Griffith 24:27
So the buyer, I mean, yes, it's the buyer's responsibility, but the buyer is not going to have they're knock on the seller's door and say, Hey, give me my money. No, no,

Desiree Holmes 24:34
and I try to make it as easy as possible, because I know it is a crazy little thing like FERPA. What do I do? So I send a link to my buyers with a detailed explanation. Because here's the thing, as the neutral third party, like we spoke about in the beginning, I cannot do it for them. I am a licensed escrow officer. I would love to do more for you, but I can't. I literally, legally cannot do it for. You, so I will try to help you as much as I can to for my ability, but I can't physically fill out the paperwork for you,

Heidi Griffith 25:06
right, right? But it is pretty simple, yeah, and, and you'll actually be informed of that earlier on in your transaction, because it's actually laid out in the purchase agreement as well. That question is actually in the purchase agreement. If you have any questions at that point, my suggestion would be to reach out to your real estate professional and get those questions narrowed down, and then they might bring an escrow professional in, just to give you a little bit better knowledge. That's

Desiree Holmes 25:31
great. Yeah, and everyone knows, I'm always available for questions. You are. You know, I wake up after hours on the weekends, like if the deal's with me, if the deal's not with me, because I know sometimes you just need, like, I just need to shoot this question by somebody real quick and get an answer for my client. So always available. If anybody ever has questions, you can hunt me down.

Heidi Griffith 25:53
We appreciate you. What? How much time we got rolling? We're running out of time. We're running out of time. Oh no. Oh man, it went quick. Huh? How about, how about you guys? Let us know if anybody has any questions about Stewart title, how we can get in touch with you if there's a phone number and email all that good stuff. Yes, you

Brian Holland 26:09
can always reach me. My name is Brian Holland. You can reach me at 702-985-2222, or my email address is Brian b, r, I, a n, period, Holland, H, O, L, L, a, n, d, at Stewart, S, T, E, W, A, R, t.com, thank

Desiree Holmes 26:28
you. And mine is Desiree Holmes, and my number 702-915-6164, is my direct line at my office, and my email is Desiree, and that's spelled like desire with an extra E. Oh, so yeah, it's, it's been the best way to explain it to people, because it's so hard, my name's so difficult, but so it's D, E, S, I, R, E, E, dot homes. And that's homes like Sherlock, not homes like we're purchasing, except that it's

Heidi Griffith 26:55
good time, yeah@stewart.com, so desiree.homes@stewart.com Yep, awesome. So I just want to thank you guys so much. Thank you for being here today. Thank you for having us all that insight on Title and Escrow and that side of the home buying and the Home Selling journey.

Brian Holland 27:12
Have a wonderful Sunday everybody. Yeah, amazing Sundays, yeah,

Heidi Griffith 27:16
yeah. We always say it takes a team to make it to the finish line, right? It sure does, and we're glad you guys are on our team. We appreciate you. So honored to be on your team. Thank you so much to both of you. Pleasure

Brian Holland 27:26
is ours. Thank

Roland Daniels 27:28
you very much. So if today's show sparked any questions about your own home buying journey, or if you're ready to explore what's possible for you, you can give us a call or text us that number is 702-210-2057 that's 702-210-2057 and be sure to follow us on Facebook at mortgage matters radio, so you don't miss any of our upcoming classes, updates or guest Interviews. Join us again next Sunday at 7:30am right here on K, U, N, V, 91.5, we'll be back with another episode of mortgage matters. Remember every step forward counts, and the more you learn, the more empowered you are to make smart and confident moves until then, stay true to yourself and your mind, bye, bye,

Brian Holland 28:22
bye, bye,