DAMN @Bobby-CA! You took my MoJo! Enough said!
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Excuse me but the last time I checked this was a Notary forum for all to share and express. I did not attack anyone and really donāt give damn about any of your dismissive comments towards my desire for my hard working professional colleagues to be paid better. If you donāt care about better pay then leave those of us alone who do. Attacking my advocacy wonāt accomplish anything but perhaps you feeling (incorrectly) like you phased me. LOL I will not be swayed by the āpersonalā attacks when there is just a difference in opinion about what is fair pay. No need to try to throw another punch at me because Iām not in the ring with you. Iām over here supporting my colleagues who I feel have a legitimate concern and perhaps not your business.
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If you donāt agree with this issue that is fine. There is no need to āpersonallyā attack anyone because there is a difference in opinion. I support my hard working fellow Notaries. I want all of us to strive and be successful. I donāt believe that anyone is asking someone to starveā¦what I read is that people would like to see us collectively stand together. If you disagree that is your choice BUT what is not acceptable for me are personal attacks thrown at me. I canāt be checked by some stranger who uses his thumbs to throw insults. Iām a professional and an adult who knows how to have a difference in opinion without stooping to insults. Iām happy if you are winning in business. Iām winning too and maybe are difference is that I really care about my colleagues who want to win also. Iām here for them not you. Thanks for sharing your opinions.
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Sorry, but Iām NOT attacking you. Re-read my response to your post. No personal attacks that I can see. Oh, maybe some pointed remarks that serve to make clear my opposing position, but thatās it. Incidentally, there is nothing wrong with, as you have said, wanting more money for the work weāre all doing. I sure do. But as I read your advocacy position, I am neither better informed nor comforted by a re-stating of the obvious and calling for higher fees. That alone just wonāt get it done; how are colleagues served by that?
It would be helpful to all fellow notaries if there was more on how to address the problematic issues raised rather than just stating an advocacy position which does nothing. What you characterize as ādismissiveā comments were not written to put anyone down but to recognize the futility of just stating the obvious and expecting colleagues to get on board with an advocacy position. Thatās how I read your post, anyway.
When I share and express, I do so in most instances with ideas and solutions, not just complaints. Of course, you can write anything you want as is your privilege. My remarks will not be āpersonalā attacks and I wonāt be argumentative or combative on this site. Rather, Iāll continue to offer what I think are actionable ideas or commentaries on how I see the marketplace evolving in a rapidly changing business and political environment. Feel free to offer any viewpoint you want on my missives; I welcome them as long as they are accurate and leave room for constructive feedback.
You have my sincere apologies if my comments were not to your liking.
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I tell companies these very same things all the time. If all of us notaries would unite and stand firm we would all have a chance ti suceed. I have save more than one loan where borrowers have been at point of refusing to sign because their loan officer did not know what he or she was talking about. As notaries, in many cases, we have to be the peace keeping force behind the lenders, title, and loan officers. Loan officers alone make huge commissions to sit in their offices while making or taking a few phone calls, filling out prefill documents, and sending off to underwriters, why should notaries not be able to make a living as well?
Every single notary needs to start looking at the closing disclosures to see the fees charges by each party involved before they sell themselves to the lowest bidder.
Most of us notaries undervalue themselves by not realizing all their costs. We literally live our lives tied to our phones, emails, texts, and signing apps. We take time from our families 24/7 to jump on an app, answer a text, or respond to an phone call and thats only the start of operating our signing agent business. Our days arent just 8 to 7 on weekdays and 9 to 5 on Sats with Sundays and most holidaya off like most of these companies. Fedex and UPS dont come pick up and drop off packages or packaging supplies to our offices daily like they do for these companies. Most of us do not have another group of employees to handle arranging our schedules, ordering our supplies, paying the bills, arranging car repairs or making sure there are other company vehicles available for our use when a break down or accident happens, completeing printing of docs, etc. We have only ourselves to complete all of these tasks.
If ALL notaries look at all these factors, not to mention the costs of our commisions, the memberships, E&O insurences, background checks, etc. into the mix we are very much treating ourselves as the āhousewifeā who doesnāt contribute to the houswhold bank account when we take the cheap paying assignments.
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(CA) OK, Iāve been admonished before for commenting on posts like this one. Iām gonna take a different approach and say that stating and re-stating the problem is worthwhile only to an extent, but itās nothing new. Iām frankly tired of the āNOTARIES UNITEā mantra. Most notaries know full well the pay disparities between others handling loan docs and what the notaries are tasked with and the divvy of the resultant fees. Notaries largely get the short end of the stick, everybody knows that. The real issue is āwhat can be done about it?ā I have some thoughts as follows:
Since the likelihood of uniting as one voice will not and cannot happen, we need to look elsewhere for a solution to satisfying our income needs. LSA work is going away fast and will be automated by 2025, in my view. Since the notary business is entering headlong into the slowest season weāve seen in two years or more, maybe there will be time for each of us as notaries to do some reflection on how to earn more money and not just keep whining about how our cut of the pie is not fair. Nobody guaranteed that any of us would make enough money all the time to be the chief income earner in our respective households. Things have changed and Iām afraid itās gonna get worse and stay that way for a while. So, letās get busy with some ideas for increasing our value and our commensurate earnings profile.
Here are some ideas:
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GNW. Get creative about pursuing General Notary Work. As Iāve written before, Iāve personally got no less than 14 non-loan related avenues that Iām working on to get more business. I believe that a few of them will turn into real money-makers for me and I wonāt be printing loan docs and doing scanbacks and running to FedEx as often.
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Be Memorable. If youāre going to try building stronger relationships with lenders/title/escrow, my advice is, skip the donuts and candy and, if you feel you must offer a gift of some sort, make it something memorable! I give away something that nobody else does (inexpensive, too, but not cheap or junky). The recipients seem to really like it and they often ask for more, which I gladly provide. (TIP: when I was a consultant to the banking industry, I gave away the same item and over a ten year period, I believe it generated roughly $250,000 in referral business!), Find your own item and work the crowd, kids.
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Notes. Send out follow-up notes to those clients who youād like to do more work with (This is NOT a new concept). I use lovely, gold-embossed stationery-quality thank-you notes and as often as not, I get nice email/text responses. I follow up every few months with the same clients and I get some nice repeat business. For instance, my elderly client, the lovely Mrs. Benevides has had me back several times for various notarizations and she treats me like I am a trusted neighbor. Think she gets a break on my fee? You BET! She refers me to family and friends with enthusiasm.
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Real Estate Agents. My wife is a prominent real estate agent and, get ready now, she hates it when vendors come to her open house and eat up the food, disrupt the Lookie-loos and hang around like pests. So, why would you as a notary go to an open house and be viewed as a pest? Well. . .
Itās all in your approach. Hereās what I do:
Dress as professionally as possible, neatly over-dress, in fact. Bring with you a professional brochure and business card that you can discreetly leave with the agent upon your departure.
When you arrive, park a block away so as not to take up homebuyer space on the street. Make sure your vehicle is clean and not plastered with your notary signs, either. Bad form, that.
DO NOT enter the home until youāre pretty sure there are no visitors inside. You do not want to interrupt any Q&A or guided touring the agent may be conducting with a potential buyer or other agent. If the selling agent is on the phone, wait outside until she/he is done. DO NOT eat the food, even if offered.
When you enter, briefly introduce yourself, hand the agent your business card and brochure (and your little gift, if you have a nice one [see above]) state your business, and GET OUT! I tell them that Iām a notary-signing agent, that I know the area well and that my work at closing will compliment the hard work the agent has put in to make the transaction a rewarding experience for everybody. I let the superior quality of my card, brochure and gift do a lot of my talking for me. Then, I get the heck outta there and let the agent get back to doing his/her job. Even if they want to chat, politely excuse yourself.
Depending upon the activity in your region, you can knock out 3 or 4 of these visits on a Saturday or Sunday, no sweat.
My goal is to become the notary of choice for a bunch of local real estate agents. The effort takes a little fortitude but the relationships you begin to build will be worth it.
CAUTION: If you find that after a couple of visits like Iāve described, youāre not getting anywhere, check your technique with a trusted relative or friend or maybe give it a while before you go back out. No sense in alienating anyone.
Addendum: Iām told by knowledgeable real estate agents that the practice I outlined above doesnāt work in a lot of cases because Escrow controls so much of the notary process. So take what I wrote for whatever its worth. Donāt waste time if you agree with the agents I spoke to 
- Brochures. Iāve mentioned brochures a couple of times, I think. I have a good one and Iām going to make it better and order a bunch (250). Iām going to take them to every mercantile, shop, restaurant, retailer, etc. in a five mile radius of my office and leave off 5 or 10. In most places (where I live, anyway) the shop owners are ambivalent about such things but they donāt seem to object if I leave my brochures in a place that doesnāt mess up their counter or entry space and tends to look good. What the heck, give it a shot!
OK, Iāve earned a break after all that stuff. I hope you can make use of one or more of the ideas Iāve suggested. Your feedback is welcome. Go get 'em!
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Please reply with quotes to my āinsultsā and āpersonal attacksā that you took offense from, and I will clarify my thoughts, as I get āsomeā misinterpret things, especially analogies. You are on a FORUM, meaning we are all āstrangers.ā When you get the clients to offer what you want for you and ALL notaries, let me know and I will ātap outā of this business by sending you my dissolution papers. But RESPECTFULLY until then, IMO, again, I do want my colleagues to win, by making the money that is realistically, in black and white, out there being offered. You want them to sit back and wait for another business to adjust their operations to satisfy yours? NOPE! Not looking for you to win. Sorry! SIMPLY? Cause itās not realistic, or rational for that matter! Itās not hard, you just have to put the shoe on the other foot. If you were a SS or Title Co., we wouldnāt even be having this conversation! BTW, be a āregularā here on the forum and you might grasp the ābigger pictureā of what others are trying to say!
(KY) Nice post! I guess I will simplify my concerns based on āmy own experiences and opinionsā (I guess needs to be the new prelude):
If you owned a Signing Service and āyou chargedā the lender $250 to do a REFI, how much would you offer to notaries when you pushed the job out? You āshould notā be able to answer this question unless you do in fact own a SS company. The reason being is they all charge differently in order to compete with one another while trying to survive. Just like we compete with other notaries in our areas. So what are you really asking of other companies? What does ālooking at the fees in the disclosureā do for any of us? Walmart workers think they are worth more than they are getting paid (and they are, trust me, I do a lot of shopping there), and whatās that doing for them? They canāt even get unionized, and they are the LARGEST employer in the US! And although they all āadvocateā for higher pay, they are still told āthere are 100ās of applicants in the que!ā You only get what your employer wants to give you, or in our case, what we agree too. Itās ugly! Itās sad! Itās unfair! We all get it. But āit is what it is.ā Anger over stuff you canāt control will not make your pockets any fatter! I āadvocateā for higher pay for all of us. Send out the petition and I will sign it! For ALL of us! But I think I have a better chance of starting my own SS Co. and thatās not even realistic to me knowing the competition out there. Funny on how ālow feesā or the definition of such wasnāt an issue when things were āboomingā the last few years. But then we went from eating steak to eating chicken overnight, and now that weāre eating vegetables (when the seasoned notaries saw it coming), the world is coming to an end! So why āadvocateā for someone else to take ALL the food of their table when we are ALL already starving? (thatās an analogy). DISCLAIMER: This post is not intended to be mean, condescending, disrespectful, or hurtful in anyway. It is meant to attract a meaningful, realistic, rational and productive response which provides constructive and positive resolutions/suggestions to an ongoing problem/issue that concerns us ALL. Me personally? I got nothing!
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My business income is still solideven with the decreases. The companies that i provide vendor services for understand my fees and have agreed to those fees. Those same companys understand that my fees increase when they send my out to fix mistakes of other notaries who were orginally sent out because they would take assignments for lower fees.
I was not making my post because i am advocating for unity because lets face it there will always be those who will do it for less. My post was more to the fact of others needing to determine their worth, expenses, etc. and stand by their determinationā¦their line in the sand so to speak.
I have a very good understanding of this business after 24 years as a signing agent with another 4 years before as a paralegal in a real estate law firm.
As another said the old days have change. We each have to do what we need to do that fits our own business. Many of us that have been in this business for a long time have seen the changes. Many of us have changed our business models acordingly to continue to provide for ourselves.
So based on your years of experience, you witnessed 2000 and 2008? So should be no surprises for you. And from reading your posts, you take NO work from SS companies (because the majority of the time they agree to NO ONEās fees). Although you didnāt address the majority of the questions/concerns in my post, Iāve been doing this 11 years and can count on one hand how many times I went out to clean up after another notary (when it was made known to me). And with all do respect, we ALL āknowā what weāre worth. I can tell just by reading the threads that its those hell bent on receiving their āworthā who are doing the most complaining when it comes to fees. The rest want āsomethingā as opposed to ānothing.ā Offers are less because the clients are getting paid less. Itās economics. Real-estate transaction demand is down, so it collaterally lowers the fee for such. All you have to do is put the shoe on the other foot (if you ātrulyā know how the machine operates).
Yes, I was in the field as a signing agent during the housing implosion. I started in this field, again first as a paralegal in a real estate law office. My career with closings started 1998. I went into the field in 2002 as a contractor.
No, I do not own a signing company. I do however have notaries that I have trained and that I do have them listed under my contracts with other companies such as Servicelink and Bankserv. At such time that I give one of my assigned closings, If I am being paid $125 I will pay them $ 100 to cover some of the self employment tax that I will pay and print costs as I usually do the printing. I also work with some local small title companies that we have made the same agreements.
I worked as a signing agent in NC from 2002 until 2018 when I moved down to Florida and have continued my business down here to present. I have been blessed with great partnerships. As far as signing companies, i except closings when they agree to my fees. If they do not then my guess would be that they assign to another signing agent.
As to your statement of only having the few errors by other signing agent, i would say that you have been very lucky and the signing agents in your area are much more reliable that in my area or your coverage area may be smaller than the coverage area I cover. On average I get 3 to 5 each month where there have been errors that need to be corrected because of other signing agents errors and that is why I started charging extra to go make those corrections. Because of previous experience, I began informing companies in my vendor packages upon signing with xompanies as well as informing companies during calls asking if I am available for a closing. A lot of times I know that another notary had went out due to the fact that a company had called me but had not agrred to my fee, sometimes i have been informed by borrowers at the closing, and other times I have had companies tell me that errors were made by previous notary.
Before excepting any closings I male sure what type of closing, location, scanback expectation, how many signers, and if this is a first time signing, etc. This model has been working for my whole career with minor adjustments as timea have changed or situations need to be addressed.
Thanks for the additional info. I think you nailed my point on the head. A SS co (or any client for that matter) would never offer the concession percentage that you do to their notaries. They just simply wouldnāt stay in business that way. By you doing what you described, you made no money, and most likely lost money.
I did not make money on that particular closing but my name stays on the top of the companysā list as well as building and continuing my network with those notaries working with me. This allows each of us to cover our areas, have backup to help each other respectfully. So in the big picture I actually make money over all.
Look up loan applications - are you licensed to do these???