January 26, 2021

Happy 2021! I am hopeful this year will be full of the perfect amounts of capital, earnings and liquidity for all of you and that we soon get to resume seeing each other in person. Drinks are on me.

TILA. Q: We are doing a mortgage to pay off a land contract. We treat these as refinancings, but we have a lender who prefers not to use a title company. The bank orders the deed and we do a seller-side-only Closing Disclosure (CD). My question is relating to the issue date. The borrowers’ CD will show 12-21-20 for the issue with a closing date of 12-24-20 and disbursement of 12-31-20. As to the sellers, should the dates match the CD for our borrower? They will not come in till the 31st to get their monies.

“The best surprise is no surprise.” Holiday Inn adopted this famous tagline in the 1970s to reassure guests that staying at one of their hotels would ensure that there were no surprises. After all, nobody likes unwelcome surprises, whether it be a lumpy pillow in a hotel room, an October surprise in a Presidential election, or the surprise a family receives when an IRA beneficiary designation — or lack thereof — results in the intended recipient not receiving the IRA assets.