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Tag Archives: hud software
April Is Fair Housing Month
This month marks the 45th anniversary of the Fair Housing Act, a law signed by President Johnson. That law and its amendments make it illegal to base decisions on sale or rental of property based on a person’s race, color, national origin, religion, gender, family status or disability.
Although racial discrimination is less frequent today than it was in 1968, fair housing violations still happen. The HUD blog recently pointed to events where a woman with children and a man with hearing loss were each denied housing. Anyone who has been discriminated against can file a complaint with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development under a HUD program designed to investigate and correct any actions taken in violation of the Fair Housing Act.
Fair housing is a year-round law, not just something to think about in April. However Fair Housing Month is a good opportunity for real estate attorneys and agents to take a look at their practices and ask themselves if they are discriminating without meaning to. Something as simple as not showing properties with stairs just because your client is in a wheelchair could be seen as a fair housing violation rather than a compassionate act.
This would be a good time to mention how Easy Soft’s HUD 1 settlement software helps you maintain a fair practice…but it doesn’t. It reduces the time it takes to complete closing forms, automatically enters property taxes and other calculations, and includes optional features that generate hundreds of real estate documents, integrate with real estate accounting software for trust management or allow you to file 1099-S forms electronically but it’s still up to you to ensure you treat all your clients equally.
However this blog isn’t just about trumpeting our products. We want to give you information that adds value to your real estate practice. In a previous blog entry we pointed you to HUD software that helps your clients get fair housing advice or file a fair housing complaint. We stay on the lookout for changes to HUD laws or tax regulations that will affect your business.
Fair housing affects us all. Real estate attorneys and agents have to be especially careful to avoid even the appearance of bias when dealing with clients. Easy Soft’s line of legal practice management software automates and simplifies your practice, allowing you to focus on providing quality service to all your clients.
April 22, 2013 in Legal Software, Legal Technologies, Real Estate Closing
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Technorati Tagged : hud 1 settlement statement, hud program, hud software, legal practice management software, real estate accounting software
Technorati Tagged : hud 1 settlement statement, hud program, hud software, legal practice management software, real estate accounting software
Adding Flexibility To Your HUD Statements
Filling out the forms for purchase or refinance of a home is a lot simpler than it used to be before there was a computer on every desk. Nowadays real estate professionals use HUD software to automate the process and ensure accurate completion of all needed paperwork. However not all solutions are created equal and you need to be sure you get an application that meets your needs.
The HUD-1 form is laid out in a fairly rigid manner. There is a specific space for every financial transaction, from title insurance premiums to county taxes to home inspector fees. This makes the process fairly straightforward, although still awfully tedious if done by hand. But what is a real estate agent supposed to do if a particular sale doesn’t fit in the predefined blocks of the form?
Forms can be amended with additional information. Multiple borrowers and sellers can be listed on the form in sections D and E respectively. As detailed below, several sections can be amended with as many line items as necessary to document all associated transactions.
On page 1 of the form, sections 200 (Amounts Paid By Or In Behalf Of Borrowers) and 500 (Reductions In Amount Due To Seller) list standard amounts such as deposits or payoffs of previous mortgage loans, as well as providing blank lines where agents can list other fees and charges. Agents can add pages with as many entries as necessary to list all amounts.
Nearly all sections on page 2 provide blank lines for agents to list miscellaneous charges associated with title charges, loan origination and more. Again, agents can attach to the form as many sheets as necessary to document transactions.
So the law allows agent to amend the form with necessary information, but not all HUD 1 software is capable of providing that flexibility. For example, a fillable PDF or Word form won’t have the capability to add more than a few charges to each section. Even some supposedly “fully-featured” real estate solutions won’t have the flexibility needed to handle all transactions.
It’s important to find legal solutions that offer the option to complete HUD closing statements completely and correctly. You don’t want a product that satisfies only 90% of the transactions you handle. Download a demo of Easy HUD to see how easy and flexible real estate documentation can be.
November 8, 2012 in Legal Software, Legal Technologies, Real Estate Closing
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Technorati Tagged : hud closing statement, hud software, hud-1 form, hud-1 software, legal solutions
Technorati Tagged : hud closing statement, hud software, hud-1 form, hud-1 software, legal solutions
Real Estate Transactions: Don’t Work Without A Net (Mortgage)
Real estate transactions are not simply money going from the buyer to the seller. A host of payments must be made to other parties including government agencies, insurance companies, home inspectors…oh and you too. You need to not only keep track of all these charges that come off the HUD 1 but must also determine if the fees have already been paid as part of the mortgage, or will be paid separately by checks you need to mail out. Our hud settlement statement software takes the tedium and guesswork out of this disbursement process so you stop worrying about making sure everyone gets paid.
When you fill out the HUD 1 forms with our software, you’ll notice that a number of the lines include a checkbox labeled Net. As you enter numbers into the form, you can mark any of these boxes to indicate the fee has been netted. That means the fee is rolled up into the gross mortgage and has already been disbursed.
Several of the boxes are automatically checked on the HUD-1 form to reflect fees that are commonly included in mortgages. These include origination charges, items required to be paid in advance by the lender, and initial escrow deposits made with the lender. Any of these can be unchecked if for some reason they were not included in the mortgage. Any prepaid fee marked with a Net box on the HUD forms can be checked and the software will adjust the net mortgage accordingly.
To see the result of the net fees, either press Ctrl-L or click “Tools > Lender Worksheet” in the menu at the top of the screen. Either of these commands brings up the Lender Worksheet. This lists the gross mortgage amount, all items added or deducted by the lender as indicated by the checked Net boxes, and the net mortgage amount. All values are taken from the HUD 1 and the calculations are performed by the software so you now the final net mortgage value is accurate.
What about items not netted? Those are handled by the ledger module, which we’ll explore in another entry.
The advantage of using hud software like Easy HUD is that you have to enter the information only one time. Values are automatically copied to other locations such as the Lender Worksheet and the software takes care of the calculations more quickly and accurately than would be possible with manual calculation.
Accuracy is critical in real estate closing process and you can’t afford to make even innocent mistakes. Don’t trust your HUD-1 form to error-prone manual completion or to software not dedicated to the real estate market. Trust Easy Soft products to do the work quickly, efficiently and accurately.
November 7, 2012 in Legal Technologies, Real Estate Closing
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Technorati Tagged : hud 1, HUD 1 forms, hud settlement statement software, hud software, hud-1 form, trust accounting
Technorati Tagged : hud 1, HUD 1 forms, hud settlement statement software, hud software, hud-1 form, trust accounting
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.
June 12, 2012 in Real Estate Closing
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Technorati Tagged : hud 1 closing, HUD 1 forms, hud software, real estate closing software
Technorati Tagged : hud 1 closing, HUD 1 forms, hud software, real estate closing software
HUD 1 or No HUD 1? Easy Soft for All Your Title Transfer Needs
There has been lots of news recently in the real estate market. The National Association of Home Builders announced its 2012 Best in American Living Awards. In the top five features, multi-generational homes experienced a 30% increase in demand.
With Americans living longer in a tight economy, remodeling of properties is being accompanied by restructuring of Deeds. Properties are moving from ownership of older parents to the next generation, who are moving into the house. It might be a life estate structure or it might be an outright transfer of ownership. To HUD 1 or not to HUD 1 might be very much on your mind as a real estate attorney.
Whether you need a HUD 1 Closing Statement or not will depend upon whether you go through a formal closing to make a house transfer between generations of the same family. You might recommend the house be appraised for its current fair market value. You might suggest a transfer title and cash out some of the equity through a new loan against the property. You need to check on whether transfer taxes will be due and owing and what forms need to be filed. If you have our Easy HUD software , you have some of the tools necessary to prepare transfer documents.
To compliment Easy HUD software, Easy Soft’s real estate document software comes with more than 200 pre-loaded forms. Data is entered once in a centralized data entry screen, and then you select which forms you want the software to populate. Our software also gives you real estate document management capability when you use the document index as a checklist to ensure that you have all the necessary real estate closing documents .
Our real estate documents software and our HUD software work in tandem. You can purchase just one or the other, as your needs dictate. The two programs, when purchased together, are fully integrated so that you can generate, view, and print more than 200 real estate closing documents .
Licenses for Easy HUD software begin at $179.50 and licenses for Easy Real Estate Documents software begin at $199. For less than $400 and a couple of computer downloads, you could be automated within the hour. Our technical support staff awaits your questions at no extra cost during the first year of your purchase.
At Easy Soft, our job is to make your job as an intergenerational real estate attorney as easy as possible. We leave to you how you manage the meeting with all concerned parties, sitting in your office. (Coffee not included.)
June 11, 2012 in Real Estate Closing
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Technorati Tagged : hud 1 closing statement, hud software, real estate document software
Technorati Tagged : hud 1 closing statement, hud software, real estate document software
Meet the Smiths – Part 2: Preparing HUD forms
It’s another typical day at the office. Mr. Smith, recently divorced, is now selling the home you had distributed to him, so that he can move into a bigger house with his second wife.
You know that you will be preparing HUD forms. To make your real estate practice profitable for routine house closings, you need Easy Soft’s HUD software. Our real estate closing software will help you and your paralegal efficiently prepare the HUD settlement statements, including payouts, prorated taxes and utilities, and transfer taxes. With so many house closings being done on a fixed-fee basis, efficiency in document production is the key to increasing your profitability.
Working with our HUD softwarebegins with the client intake information. Even though there are numerous forms to complete, when you use Easy Soft real estate closing software to prepare your HUD forms and other forms, you simply input client information once. In fact, you can open a new client file and use the screen questionnaire as the agenda for your client meeting. One more click of your mouse and our HUD software automatically populates more than 200 closing documents that are pre-loaded into our software package.
We know from working with our Easy Soft clients – more than 15,000 of them – that our software products are effective at increasing profitability for routine house closings because it is designed for everyone to able to use it. The attorney, the paralegal, and the secretary. Our HUD software screens breaks down each piece of necessary information into simple fill-in fields and pull-down boxes. All math calculations are performed by the software program; no calculators or spreadsheets necessary. And, if you discover a data input error, simply correct it in the original computer screen, and all corresponding forms will be immediately corrected.
Whether you are the attorney for the seller or the attorney for the buyer, our HUD software can be paired with our trust accounting software. Each escrow account you open for a client transaction must be separately documented and Easy Soft’s Easy Trust software does just that. You simply input client information, bank information, and any escrow agent information, and then balance each escrow account as monthly bank statements are received.
Get your clients through routine real estate transactions with ease, using Easy Soft.
May 22, 2012 in Real Estate Closing
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Technorati Tagged : hud software, law office software, trust accounting software
Technorati Tagged : hud software, law office software, trust accounting software















