Anyone have any experience as a mobile notary?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
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I’ve worked in the mortgage business for a few years. I make decent money, don’t mind my job too much. Know it pretty well. I’m getting tired of the office environment, though, and I’d like to do something with a little more flexibility and freedom.

I think the best way to make money as a mobile notary is signing loan docs (please correct me if I’m wrong?) and that’s good and bad for me.

It’s good because I know the business and I know what and where the borrowers would need to sign.

It’s bad because the market has turned down for now. This could potentially mean that a lot of formerly part-time mobile notaries have gone back to their full-time jobs, but it might also mean that there’s just not enough work to go around. I don’t know.

What do you guys think? Has anybody ever done it, or know someone who has? Is it a decent job?

2

Coincidentally this is what I do for a living. Yes, the market for refinances has slowed down a great deal since the post 9/11 boom, but there’s still plenty of work for the time being, and remote closers are always in demand in these parts. It helps to farm yourself out to lots of different companies to keep a steady flow of work coming in until at least one can keep you occupied.

The biggest problems are logistical ones, the getting the package, borrowers, and yourself all at a prearranged location all at approximately the same time. At some point everything fails, be it traffic, weather, Fed Ex, etc which can be really frustrating. Then, since you have to figure travel time into doing closings you have to be careful to not let one set of really picky borrowers or slow and sloppy lenders blow your entire schedule for the day. You really have to be on your numbers since you have relatively zero back up like you do in a regular office setting.

Some days it’s a breeze, but on those other days (and since you’re in the business you know what I mean) can be tenfold worse than they are otherwise.

3

Best of luck if you decide to do this, but you’d be a lot better off in a state where notaries are allowed to do weddings (there are only two, I think) which are easy and lucrative. Loan closings are the toughest and least remunerative jobs, and all failures on the part of anybody involved result in you not getting paid for several hours’ work and travel, much less your considerable expenses.

First of all, mostly you’ll be expected to receive via E-mail and print multiple copies of the loan documents yourself, to be sent back (at your expense if you’re not lucky enough to be given the title company’s UPS number) to the issuer. This will cost you a lot in printer cartridges even before it ruins your printer entirely, which will be soon. Second, you’ll get the documents roughly two hours after the very last deadline by which the closing company promised you’d get them. Don’t complain – they’re the ones who are paying you…maybe. After you find your way out to the buyers’ house (sure the dog bites, but at least they said he ain’t rabid), you get to go to work, which mainly will consist of telling the darling couple that you didn’t write the agreement and if they have questions they should call their agent (who didn’t show up) or the title company (which is in California and won’t open for two hours) or the underwriting bank (which won’t answer anything until the papers are signed). Two trips to Kinko’s (to receive more documents that weren’t included in the original batch) later, you get to sit down for two hours for the actual signing. Provided their witness(es) bothered to show up. After, you stagger to the UPS office to send off the docs and then home to E-mail and snail-mail your bill, and you hope they’ll pay promptly because, really, what the hell are you going to do if they don’t?

On the bright side, you can develop a sideline notarizing quitclaims and powers of attorney and wills for sick old people in nursing homes, which are a hundred times faster (and 200X more depressing), but at least you get paid then and there. Usually with an out-of-state check that you’ll find out if it’s any good two weeks from now when it clears.

4

[QUOTE=The King of Soup]
Best of luck if you decide to do this, but you’d be a lot better off in a state where notaries are allowed to do weddings (there are only two, I think) which are easy and lucrative. Loan closings are the toughest and least remunerative jobs, and all failures on the part of anybody involved result in you not getting paid for several hours’ work and travel, much less your considerable expenses.
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Coincidentally, I’m an ordained minister and I have 3 weddings under my belt (2 friends, 1 family member.) I told my wife today that I was contemplating putting an ad in the paper “Non-Religious/Alternative Religion weddings. Same Sex (ceremonies only)” - - or something to that effect. I have no idea what I could even charge for a wedding, though, and I’d hate to get stage-fright at the first wedding someone was actually paying me for!

[QUOTE=The King of Soup]
First of all, mostly you’ll be expected to receive via E-mail and print multiple copies of the loan documents yourself, to be sent back (at your expense if you’re not lucky enough to be given the title company’s UPS number) to the issuer. This will cost you a lot in printer cartridges even before it ruins your printer entirely, which will be soon. Second, you’ll get the documents roughly two hours after the very last deadline by which the closing company promised you’d get them. Don’t complain – they’re the ones who are paying you…maybe. After you find your way out to the buyers’ house (sure the dog bites, but at least they said he ain’t rabid), you get to go to work, which mainly will consist of telling the darling couple that you didn’t write the agreement and if they have questions they should call their agent (who didn’t show up) or the title company (which is in California and won’t open for two hours) or the underwriting bank (which won’t answer anything until the papers are signed). Two trips to Kinko’s (to receive more documents that weren’t included in the original batch) later, you get to sit down for two hours for the actual signing. Provided their witness(es) bothered to show up. After, you stagger to the UPS office to send off the docs and then home to E-mail and snail-mail your bill, and you hope they’ll pay promptly because, really, what the hell are you going to do if they don’t?

On the bright side, you can develop a sideline notarizing quitclaims and powers of attorney and wills for sick old people in nursing homes, which are a hundred times faster (and 200X more depressing), but at least you get paid then and there. Usually with an out-of-state check that you’ll find out if it’s any good two weeks from now when it clears.
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Wow. That’s a nitty-gritty description. What do you think of this Clurican?

King of Soup - were you a mobile notary at one point?

What else can notaries do?

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[QUOTE=Cisco]
Coincidentally, I’m an ordained minister and I have 3 weddings under my belt (2 friends, 1 family member.) I told my wife today that I was contemplating putting an ad in the paper “Non-Religious/Alternative Religion weddings. Same Sex (ceremonies only)” - - or something to that effect. I have no idea what I could even charge for a wedding, though, and I’d hate to get stage-fright at the first wedding someone was actually paying me for!

[/QUOTE]

Couple hundred bucks seems about right to me. If you’re serious abut it, I’d place two separate ads with different contact information: one for the Alternative weddings, and one for same-sex ceremonies. Potential customers for the former may be turned off by the references to the latter, and there’s no point in giving customers a reason to avoid you.

6

What do I think? The King doesn’t sound too far off the mark from what I’ve heard and as far as worst case horror stories go, it’s probably dead nuts right. Personally I would never work for a company that expects all that extra effort from anyone, but yeah, the potential for that kind of abuse is huge. Just massive. There is a huge level of trust needed to pull this kind of thing off. You have to trust the people at the title company not to make you look like the asshole holding the Explain Why Shit Went Wrong To Some Pissed Off Borrowers Bag, absolutely.

We take care of all the printing and sending of docs and such (we require closing packages the day before the closing date for the remote deals, it becomes cost prohibitive to always use messengers) and we let anyone use our Fed Ex account that does work for us. Things change, but we don’t do in home closings, so we can usually fax a few new docs and there are copy machines on site. Most of our closings are done in places of business or at other title company offices (we pay a room rental fee), so that helps a great deal. We don’t do home closings anymore, those have posed some really uncomfortable situations in the past so that’s not part of the offering.

Really you need to talk to your prospective employers about what they expect from you and what you expect from them before agreeing to doing any work. There are literally thousands of title companies out there, but only a few reputable ones. First American, Lawyers, Fidelity/Chicago Title and LandAmerica are the only real players in the game. Don’t work with the indie fly by nights and your chances of success and happiness increase tenfold.

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[QUOTE=JSexton]
Couple hundred bucks seems about right to me. If you’re serious abut it, I’d place two separate ads with different contact information: one for the Alternative weddings, and one for same-sex ceremonies. Potential customers for the former may be turned off by the references to the latter, and there’s no point in giving customers a reason to avoid you.
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Yes, but then someone like me who wanted an officiant for an Alternative Religion Same-Sex union would never find him/her! :smiley: One stop shopping is convenient for all of us girl witches who want to get hitched. And yes, 100 bucks would have been perfect. As it was, my friend Frankie did a fine job.

8

To continue the hijack - I get between $100 and $150 for a simple ceremony. An hour meeting with them to discuss the vows/ceremony/etc., an hour for the rehearsal, an hour at the wedding (about 15 minutes of talking, 45 minutes of waiting for the photographer). Sometimes I get invited to the rehearsal dinner, usually invited to the reception (usually decline both, seems rude to charge someone to eat their food).

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[QUOTE=jellyblue]
Yes, but then someone like me who wanted an officiant for an Alternative Religion Same-Sex union would never find him/her! :smiley: One stop shopping is convenient for all of us girl witches who want to get hitched. And yes, 100 bucks would have been perfect. As it was, my friend Frankie did a fine job.
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Right - I don’t think most peple with alternative or no religion care too much about SSM - - - or am I mistaken?

Is that your sole source of income? How much business do you get, and how? Ever done two in a day?

10

[QUOTE=Cisco]
Right - I don’t think most peple with alternative or no religion care too much about SSM - - - or am I mistaken?

Is that your sole source of income? How much business do you get, and how? Ever done two in a day?
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WTH? I wrote a long, detailed response to this, I know I did. Freakin’ post-demons - Begone I say!

I’ll try again.
I’m a computer geek by trade (or nerd, I can’t remember which is which). I got ordained as a joke and have a friend who videotapes weddings and DJ’s receptions. He had a couple that hired him but didn’t have a minister yet so he asked me to help out. I’d just finished a speech class in college and gotten over my stage fright, so I agreed (as if you care, I graduated at 33). Turns out I can project a deep, soothing type voice fairly well, and I can adopt that weird cadence that preachers all seem to have. I think my voice is better suited to funerals and the like, but I’ve had no complaints.
Never done two in a day - heck, I’ve never done two in a month, but there’s no reason I couldn’t. And I mainly have dealt with people on a budget (aka “broke”), so my prices might be a bit low.

If you’re serious, you might try to hook up with a baker, a photographer, a DJ, and/or videographer (sp?), that way you all can recommend each other to any clients that are without a certain service. Non-exclusive of course, because maybe the client only needs a minister and a DJ this time.

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[QUOTE=Cisco]
Right - I don’t think most peple with alternative or no religion care too much about SSM - - - or am I mistaken?

(snip)
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More the opposite: not all people comfortable with SSM want to call four directions and do a handfasting.
You know, I don’t know if you’re in a fairly gay friendly state (VA = forget it), but advertising in gay and lesbian throwaways would be a really good idea. We need notaries for Domestic Partnership agreements that aren’t done by attorneys, as well as living wills etc. Good luck!

12

[QUOTE=Bobotheoptimist]

If you’re serious, you might try to hook up with a baker, a photographer, a DJ, and/or videographer (sp?), that way you all can recommend each other to any clients that are without a certain service. Non-exclusive of course, because maybe the client only needs a minister and a DJ this time.
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Funny again, my wife is a pastry chef and does wedding cakes on the side.

Well, there’s two points to be made here. The first is that I would keep my ad very generic, something along the lines of:

The second point being that I’d rather not do Christian weddings, even if they were same sex (not saying I wouldn’t do them, just that I’d rather not.) The first wedding I did was rather large and it seemed like about half the people thought it was hilarious to make small-talk about how the minister (me) wasn’t reglious, and the other half were deeply Christian. I got some NASTY looks at that one and even a few passing comments.

I’d be delighted to do same-sex ceremonies but if they are Christian I’d rather them know up front that I’m not, rather than have an akward moment when they ask me what parts of the bible I read from or what church I belong to, etc. Hence, I’d like to keep the Non-Religious/Alternative Religion text in any ads I might place.

By the way, how the hell did we get so deep into this topic? This thread is about being escaping the office environment to be a mobile notary!

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[QUOTE=Cisco]
Funny again, my wife is a pastry chef and does wedding cakes on the side.
[/QUOTE]
Well, there you go! Perfect!

[QUOTE=Cisco]
The second point being that I’d rather not do Christian weddings, <snip>I’d be delighted to do same-sex ceremonies but if they are Christian I’d rather them know up front that I’m not, rather than have an akward moment when they ask me what parts of the bible I read from or what church I belong to, etc.
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The great part about doing weddings for people you don’t know is that they don’t ask. Keep a couple different variations of the basic christian wedding on hand and remember what Paul wrote to the Corinthians. I’ve never had anyone ask if I’m christian, but I do have a big-ass bible I haul around with me (big enough to hide my printout of the ceremony).

[QUOTE=Cisco]
By the way, how the hell did we get so deep into this topic? This thread is about being escaping the office environment to be a mobile notary!
[/QUOTE]
I dunno, but I still want to be a notary.

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[QUOTE=Bobotheoptimist]
I dunno, but I still want to be a notary.
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Me too. The city offers free courses, but they’re all during the day on weekdays.

I’m thinking this wedding thing could work . . . I could place a couple ads and see what kind of response I get while I still keep my full-time job. Most weddings are on the weekend anyway, right?