The most common scams around home buying are wire fraud - contact the buyer pretending to be the title company and steal their money. The data in a mortgage is exactly what you need to enable these scams and you're getting people to hand it to you and at the same time tell you they are about to wire money.
Yep. When we closed on our house we got a whole lecture from the title company about how frequently data breaches lead to wire fraud and to not trust anyone. Mortgage originators are constantly under attack to try to get at the information that OP is asking people to just casually upload.
Their aggressive dismissal of the concern is not a good look.
I am not dismissing the concern, I was stating the tool solves an even larger concern. I'm doing everything I can to setup it up to be secure, private, and worthy of trust and addressing the feedback points.
If you have suggestions more than "don't trust this random internet tool even if it gives you free advice, regardless of the value it offers", please let me know [thanks emoji]
Wire Transfers are not undoable and instant, much like Zelle. So I always recommend people send $10 first, and confirm everything works, before sending real money. When doing the confirmation, try using a different channel of communication, to ensure you are getting the right person. i.e. call them directly from known good phone numbers or something.
Yes many banks charge $30 or more for a wire transfer, but I'd rather just pay the $60 than have a large sum wire transfer lost, stolen, etc.
Some banks/Brokerages are sane and do not charge extra for wire transfers. Fidelity is one such. BOA also(if you have enough assets there, $100k will do it).
Is it too paranoid that even for first time Zelle (with people I know in real life) I send a $ and ask them to see if they received it, before sending anything else?
I have never done a wire transfer at a residential closing. I come to the closing at the title company office with a cashier's check from my bank for the amount they told me to bring.
Cashier's check was only accepted for amounts less than $10k at our closing by our title company. This seems common to require wire. The title company contracted with a 3rd party escrow service so the money was required into the title company's account at the escrow service. I assume a cashier's check would need to be mailed to the escrow company
Aside from the personal details (name, address, etc), they can collect pricing info on houses, run analytics, and swoop the deal with a slightly better offer or better yet, sell it to wholesale buyers, reits, and whoever is interested in stealing the deal.
>they can collect pricing info on houses, run analytics
AFAIK house sale prices (ie. property transactions) are open in many (most?) jurisdictions.
>and swoop the deal with a slightly better offer
How does that even work? The winning bidder is presumably someone who gave the highest offer. Why would another company pay above and beyond that, considering that there's probably several other serious buyers who aren't willing to pay more?
The terms are not public until the house is sold. In the contract pending state you don’t know how much it is going to sell for. Theoretically if they saw a buyer accepting a crazy low offer they could alert the troops.
But it doesn’t need a lot of the data in that document, so really they need a way to redact all the unnecessary data to require less trust.
The deal isn’t always about the price. For example, a $1M house bought with $100K down and $900K mortgage is a worse deal for the seller as compared to $500K down and $500K financed. Assumption here is that it is more likely to get a $500K loan irrespective of the appraised value of the house.
A lower all cash offer (say $975K) is likely a better offer for the seller because it reduces the risk for them and closes the transaction much quicker than a mortgage transaction.
I have been a buyer in two transactions where my offer was slightly lower than the highest bidder, but with better terms.
People aren't concerned about giving their details to a mortgage servicing company, they're concerned about giving their details to a random website called "closing.wtf", which promises to provide mortgage advice for free with no other obvious revenue source.
The most common scams around home buying are wire fraud - contact the buyer pretending to be the title company and steal their money. The data in a mortgage is exactly what you need to enable these scams and you're getting people to hand it to you and at the same time tell you they are about to wire money.
Yep. When we closed on our house we got a whole lecture from the title company about how frequently data breaches lead to wire fraud and to not trust anyone. Mortgage originators are constantly under attack to try to get at the information that OP is asking people to just casually upload.
Their aggressive dismissal of the concern is not a good look.
I am not dismissing the concern, I was stating the tool solves an even larger concern. I'm doing everything I can to setup it up to be secure, private, and worthy of trust and addressing the feedback points.
If you have suggestions more than "don't trust this random internet tool even if it gives you free advice, regardless of the value it offers", please let me know [thanks emoji]
4 replies →
Wire Transfers are not undoable and instant, much like Zelle. So I always recommend people send $10 first, and confirm everything works, before sending real money. When doing the confirmation, try using a different channel of communication, to ensure you are getting the right person. i.e. call them directly from known good phone numbers or something.
Yes many banks charge $30 or more for a wire transfer, but I'd rather just pay the $60 than have a large sum wire transfer lost, stolen, etc.
Some banks/Brokerages are sane and do not charge extra for wire transfers. Fidelity is one such. BOA also(if you have enough assets there, $100k will do it).
Is it too paranoid that even for first time Zelle (with people I know in real life) I send a $ and ask them to see if they received it, before sending anything else?
2 replies →
I have never done a wire transfer at a residential closing. I come to the closing at the title company office with a cashier's check from my bank for the amount they told me to bring.
Did you bought enough houses to assume that's always the case?
My experience was that I was told to send the cashier's check using overnight FedEx because they did not have office in my area.
1 reply →
Cashier's check was only accepted for amounts less than $10k at our closing by our title company. This seems common to require wire. The title company contracted with a 3rd party escrow service so the money was required into the title company's account at the escrow service. I assume a cashier's check would need to be mailed to the escrow company
2 replies →
The only method available to me at closing was a wire transfer. It is dumb.
Aside from the personal details (name, address, etc), they can collect pricing info on houses, run analytics, and swoop the deal with a slightly better offer or better yet, sell it to wholesale buyers, reits, and whoever is interested in stealing the deal.
>they can collect pricing info on houses, run analytics
AFAIK house sale prices (ie. property transactions) are open in many (most?) jurisdictions.
>and swoop the deal with a slightly better offer
How does that even work? The winning bidder is presumably someone who gave the highest offer. Why would another company pay above and beyond that, considering that there's probably several other serious buyers who aren't willing to pay more?
The terms are not public until the house is sold. In the contract pending state you don’t know how much it is going to sell for. Theoretically if they saw a buyer accepting a crazy low offer they could alert the troops.
But it doesn’t need a lot of the data in that document, so really they need a way to redact all the unnecessary data to require less trust.
Edit: words.
The deal isn’t always about the price. For example, a $1M house bought with $100K down and $900K mortgage is a worse deal for the seller as compared to $500K down and $500K financed. Assumption here is that it is more likely to get a $500K loan irrespective of the appraised value of the house.
A lower all cash offer (say $975K) is likely a better offer for the seller because it reduces the risk for them and closes the transaction much quicker than a mortgage transaction.
I have been a buyer in two transactions where my offer was slightly lower than the highest bidder, but with better terms.
6 replies →
> name, address, etc
In my country all that plus your social security number and tax declarations etc are public information. What's your opinion on that?
That...is not how mortgage servicing companies operate.
People aren't concerned about giving their details to a mortgage servicing company, they're concerned about giving their details to a random website called "closing.wtf", which promises to provide mortgage advice for free with no other obvious revenue source.
2 replies →