Tag Archives: hud 1 closing

Easy HUD: Not Just For Government Forms

Easy HUD automates real estate practices to allow agents and other professionals to focus on sales rather than paperwork. Although you may think the software is meant to only simplify the process of completing the HUD settlement statement form, the optional Real Estate Documents module lets you also produce hundreds of other documents too.

HUD 1 closing documents are not fun to fill out. They are long and tedious and can put even your average accountant to sleep. We automate the process so you have to enter only key information and let the software do the work of putting the right numbers in the right places, making sure everything adds up correctly, and producing a complete, accurate and professional-looking form.

Not to sound like a late night infomercial but wait! There’s more! The Real Estate Documents module turns this HUD settlement statement software into the comprehensive document production tool every real estate office needs.

Do you handle clients looking to rent properties? Quickly print off commercial and residential leases, rental agreements, subleases and personal guaranties. Do you focus on commercial clients? It includes documents for corporate sales and transfers.

Even if you handle just general home sales, purchases and refinances you know that HUD forms aren’t the only documents you produce. Easily generate letters about closing dates, surveyor payments, second mortgage payoffs and more. All documents pull client information from the same database as the HUD forms so you don’t have to worry about embarrassing mistakes like spelling a client’s name differently on each document.

A lot of modern real estate correspondence is digital and we’ve got you covered there as well. Any of our real estate documents can be saved as PDF or RTF files for easy transmission to clients, government offices or other recipients. If you use the cloud version of the software, you can generate documents from any location and any computer, emailing the electronic version immediately or waiting to print it out when you get back to the office.

Document generation is just one of the features included in Easy HUD. Find out more about our real estate application or any of our legal practice management software products by downloading a free demo today.

Posted by Rick Kabra on February 16, 2013 in Legal Software, Real Estate Closing | Comments Off
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Avoid The Taxman–Don’t File 1099-S If You Don’t Have To

Nobody likes the enormous stack of paperwork that goes along with a real estate transaction. Wouldn’t it be great if you could avoid filling out a document and save money on top if it? Well in some cases you can. Part of the HUD 1 closing process is IRS form 1099-S, but not every sale needs to be reported. According to the IRS there are five kinds of real estate transactions that don’t require 1099-S forms to be filed.

1) A de minimis transfer – In other words, if you sell the house for basically nothing. In this case, the IRS defines “nothing” as $600. If the total value of all property, services and money received by the seller and documented on the HUD settlement statement form is less than $600, the sale doesn’t have to be reported.

2) Satisfying a secured debt – If you are transferring the property to the lender to satisfy the mortgage obligation then it does not have to be reported. This would include foreclosure, abandonment or a deed in lieu of foreclosure.

3) It’s not a sale – If the home is being given as a gift or the financing is not related to the acquisition of real estate then it doesn’t have to be reported to the IRS.

4) Corporate transfers – If the seller is a corporation, government or volume transfer or, then no 1099-S is not necessary. A volume transfer or is someone like a builder or developer that treats the property as inventory rather than as an asset.

5) Homeowners – This is the most common one. The 1099-S is designed to tax real estate investors, not average homeowners moving to a new residence. In a nutshell if you lived in the house, didn’t sell another house recently, and the total gain reported on the HUD 1 closing form is $250,000 or less then you don’t need to file a 1099-S. The real rules are more complicated than that but that gives you the gist of it.

You still have to file your HUD statement but if you can avoid the 1099-S this means not only less paperwork but less money out of pocket. The main reason not to file the 1099-S is the seller won’t be taxed on the sale.

DISCLAIMER: We aren’t real estate attorneys. We aren’t tax accountants. We are software developers with access to the instructions for form 1099-S . Consult with a professional before making any decisions about your home or taxes.

If you do need to file a 1099-S, Easy Soft’s HUD settlement statement software makes it easy to file the form manually or electronically. Contact Easy soft for more information on the 1099-S module or to ask us about any of our law practice management software products.

Posted by Rick Kabra on December 29, 2012 in Legal Software, Legal Technologies, Real Estate Closing | Comments Off
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Case Management Keeps You From Becoming A Basket Case

Real estate professionals have to be prepared to juggle multiple clients, treating each one as the most important person in the world. Tracking the details of each deal can be impossible unless you use real estate closing software to manage all your cases.

Open the case management module in Easy HUD by clicking the “Tools” menu and selecting “Case Management”, or by pressing “Ctrl-M”. This opens up a list of all purchases and refinances being handled by your agency. At a glance you can see important information like the property city and the closing date for all current cases. Click on any case to bring up the task list and see how the case is progressing.

A case list is only as good as its most recent update, so you’ll be glad to hear that the database updates automatically. Every time HUD forms are saved, the software writes the latest case information to the list so you have the most recent data on display. If you are using the software over a network, then users can see a shared case list that documents every case being handled by the agency.

Once the sale or refinance is complete you don’t want the information to clutter up the current case list. Click the “Inactive” box on the right side of the case listing and the property will no longer be displayed among active cases. If you need to review inactive cases, use the dropdown labeled “Show” to list all inactive cases, or all cases regardless of active state.

It can be difficult to find a specific client if you handle a lot of transactions, especially if it’s an old, inactive case. You can sort by column or use the search function to find cases by buyer, seller, city, closing date or case creator. You can search for exact matches or, for example, for all cases closed before or after a certain date.

The print function makes it easy to generate an inventory report so you can track the status of all outstanding cases and ensure nothing falls through the cracks.

Proactive HUD 1 closing case management optimizes company time and maximized profits. Contact us for more information on how Easy Soft law office software automates and simplifies real estate transactions.

Posted by Rick Kabra on November 9, 2012 in Legal Software | Comments Off
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Short Sales Predicted to Surge in 2012? Get your Easy Soft HUD Software!

It’s now becoming mainstream media headline news: according to CNN, short sales are expected to surge in 2012. It seems American homeowners have figured out that short sales are an alternative to foreclosure. In January alone, CNN reported that short sales rose 33% compared to the same time last year.

If you’re already a practicing real estate attorney, now is the time for you to download a free demo of our Easy HUD software to make all your HUD-1 forms as easy as automation can be. With Easy HUD, you get the power of a single data entry point that automatically fills in all the blanks on HUD documents, including the HUD Settlement Statement .

In a short sale, the lender accepts a lesser payment than what is owed in satisfaction of the loan. The lesser figure can be proffered when a ready buyer makes a written offer on a property and the seller wants to accept the offer.

What else is about to contribute to the short sale trend in 2012? New regulations from the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which oversees Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that will make our HUD software more useful than ever. News is that the FHFA is going to require lenders to respond to short sale requests within 30-days. This regulation could drop the lender response time to 30-days from an average of over 300-days, further increasing the desirability of short sales over foreclosures. Are you ready to HUD 1 at Mach 1?

In response to these regulations, you’ll also be expected to act quickly on behalf of your clients. With our Easy HUD software, your automation of the HUD 1 Closing Statement will save you time and allows your client to complete the short sale as soon as the lender gives the okay. Our HUD 1 will make you Number 1 with your clients.

As a practical matter, even with the new regulation, there may continue to be other delays between approval of a short sale offer and the closing of the transfer of title. With our Easy HUD software, no matter how many times a closing is rescheduled, the calculations are easily recalculated by the software and put straight into forms like the HUD 1 . You simply input the closing date, the annual taxes, the tax rates, and let Easy Soft do the rest, including the HUD Settlement Statement .

As fast as you can say “ HUD 1 ,” you can start your free download of a trial copy of the Easy Soft HUD software to help you prepare for the surge in short sales. Now that’s a wave that worth catching.

Posted by Rick Kabra on June 12, 2012 in Real Estate Closing | Comments Off
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From Start to Finish – Easy Soft Real Estate Document Software

Spring is in the air and real estate agents and buyers are out in droves.

Are you ready for this season’s up-tick in real estate business?

Every real estate attorney we know tells us that the way to be profitable is efficiency and volume.  There’s no better way to accomplish these benchmarks than through Easy Soft’s real estate document software.  When you combine our Real Estate Documents software with our Easy HUD software, you’ll have more than 200 closing forms at your disposal, from a Mortgage Note to a Warranty Deed to the HUD-1 closing forms.

Using our legal software, you enter the essential client information only once and on one screen.  Our real estate document software automatically populates this essential transaction information into all of the corresponding fields on every form that you select.  You can use the real estate document software and the HUD software to prepare every document, including the HUD settlement statement and associated closing documents.

All of the real estate documents you generate can be saved in Microsoft Word or Adobe .pdf format.  You can e-mail documents from within the program.  These features of our real estate document software and our HUD software allow you to stay on track to the task checklists that are also built into the products.

With our Easy Soft attorney trust accounting software, you can also manage your real estate escrow accounts, order checks, and print checks.  Our legal escrow accounting software allows you to establish an account for each client, separately track all deposits and payments, and document your ethics compliance.

You may be thinking that to put together a software suite to enhance your busy real estate practice you will have to break the bank.  Not true.  At Easy Soft, we’re dedicated to delivering easy-to-use software to help attorneys deliver quality professional services at an affordable price.  Licenses for our real estate document software start at $199.  Our HUD software at $179.50.  And our attorney trust accounting software at $249.  All products include one year of free technical support and an unconditional 30-day money back guarantee.

Posted by Rick Kabra on April 17, 2012 in Legal Software, Real Estate Closing | Comments Off
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HUD settlement statement – Enter it Once Enter it Forever

If you’re a real estate closing professional or settlement agent, then you know. From the buyer, seller, and lender, to the realtor, title insurance agent, and governmental entities: there are easily about a dozen parties involved in any given HUD-1 closing.

That’s a dozen extra opportunities to receive inaccurate, outdated information-from each of these parties. That’s what makes Easy Soft’s data entry philosophy far more than a time saver. It makes it a “closing” saver. It’ll clarify your closing, streamline your communications with parties and clients alike, sift out time-consuming errors, and help bring you into compliance with your HUD-1 regulatory obligations.

Here at Easy Soft, we specialize in legal software that helps professionals like you to become more efficient. After all, technology ought to help you in your mission to streamline your work effort, reduce your overall energy expenditure, and leave you with the time to turn your attention to the finer, more discretionary tasks inherent in your job.

So we introduced the theme of “enter it once” to all of our legal software. What this means: once you enter your client’s information, you’re done. That information populates all of the data fields that require it. It fills in raw numbers for automated calculations (say, on your HUD settlement statement), provides name and address details for correspondence, forms, and other filings and documentation, and lets you prepare all of the myriad things you need to: without duplication of effort. This is true of divorce data, billing data, and trust data. And it’s certainly true of HUD-1 closings.

Outside of your closings, you can also use the data in more creative ways. You can use it for streamlining your records-and making them paperless. You can use it for your Rolodex-or Outlook Contacts files. It’s already organized-in a fashion that you are familiar with, and can navigate around.

The data is there for when you need to correct a number or a spelling error (you only need to correct it in one place, at one time). It’s there if this client and/or lender retains you again-or you have any other dealings with the same party (ies). It won’t be misplaced, and (if you’re backing up properly), it won’t go away.

Practicing law and handling real estate closing becomes much easier when you can enter it once: and enter it forever.

To learn more about any of our legal software, call us at 800 905 7638.

Posted by Rick Kabra on August 25, 2011 in Real Estate Closing | Comments Off
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