New Member - Silly Questions

I’ll be completing my NSA Exam in next 7 days or so, but wanted to ask some silly questions.
(As soon as I’m more experienced, I’ll be glad to offer my “expertise” as well.)

For NSA Loan Signing work, HOW are you typically paid for a one-time call? Should you be paid before performing your work/after? I’m seeing in some threads here that it is not uncommon to never be paid ???

Also, my state’s charge for simple stamp and signature is minimal, but how do I establish a standard rate for NSA work for cases where I am not already being texted/called with gig address & fee.

Thanks,
Mike in New Jersey

Not silly, just hard to answer because First, you have to figure out what your expenses are as that determines what a profitable fee is FOR YOU for all the places you’re willing to go. Hint…many, if not most, initial offers are not profitable, even if location is across the street. Rare to be paid before; 30 to 60, 90 days way more common and ‘never’ happens more than it should. You must research what your peers say about a company and BELIEVE them.

As interest rates have increased, fewer loans being taken out, less NSAs in demand. Wondering why this seemed to you to be a good time to start.

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Go to Notary Rotary and you will see the ratings for the different signings companies. I have follow that site for at least 13 years and it has saved me from a lot of disasters. I personally won’t work with companies that don’t pay within 30-45 days maximum. My bills are due once a month and they too should pay once a month. True that many wait until a loan transaction closes which makes it take longer, however, many are just ok with paying longer because many notaries are fine with it. Some figure that well at least it is better than nothing, however, I add the waiting period into my expenses and it just isn’t good business practice in my opinion. I don’t want to have to keep hounding them to get paid. That is more time spent on my part. You are nearly always paid after the fact. You may ask to get paid via PayPal ahead of time, but that is rare.
I usually charge $125 for a mortgage signing. You have to minus out expenses and time. Look below for a breakdown of doing a $40 loan modification which requires no printing. You have to add printing and preparing time if you are printing. You can do this with a $125 charge and minus out the expenses in your area. In Hawaii the expenses are high.


I have been in the business for 28 years, 16 years as a mortgage underwriter. I have done about 12,000 signings in my career. I don’t really do loan mods because the pay is too low. I suppose if it was in my town I might but unlikely.
The minimum I would typically charge for a load mod is $70, however they won’t usually go that high.
For mortgage signings I charge $125. In Hawaii we charge a bit higher though because cost of living is so high.
Just figure in this when you decide what to charge:
*Cost of expenses such as paper and toner
*Taxes taken out
*Gas
*Time figure in print time, process time, driving time, signing time. When you add in all the time minus the above expenses that is your approximate profit.

As you can see, $40 won’t make you a profit. It also doesn’t really give you any experience. You just stamp one form usually and you don’t process or print any docs.

Just take my advise and you will see you are working for nothing.
This is how I would see this one:
*$40 fee
*Minus taxes at 30%-$12…makes $28
*Minus expenses…$7…makes $21
*Minus drive time, for a 15 minute drive each way…
*Minus signing time and drop package drop off time…1 hour
*Minus prepare time 15 minutes because no printing
Total time is 1 3/4 hours
$12 approximate profit after time and expenses
You can see it is a lot of work to make $12.
And if distance further than 15 minutes each way, the expenses go higher for both gas and time.

If you think of yourself as a business and you have to make a profit, you will have direction in where to go. If you cannot make a profit, then your business is not going to be successful.
In all these years the amount paid is the same of less than when I started. With all the automated systems now all the relationships built over years mean nothing.
To me, you take good care of your clients and if they are reputable, they will take care of you. Loyalty used to be there but is hard to find these days. The cheapest is all they want. Remember too, that once you accept a lower fee once, you will find it hard to go higher later because they will refer back to the signing where you accepted less.

I hope this helps.

ALOHA

Christine

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Thank you for your response…

Thank you for your response…VERY HELPFUL!