The cliché is, “You learn something new everyday” right? Well, yesterday I did learn something new!
I thought I would share some newly found knowledge with you concerning Power of Attorney agreements in real estate. If you’re not sure what a POA is, simply put it’s a document that allows someone to sign legal paperwork on your behalf. The most common use for a POA in real estate is when one of the buyers or sellers live out of town and cannot make it to a closing/settlement.
This was the exact scenario that played out yesterday at a closing for one of my first time home buyer clients. Mrs. Buyer could not make it to closing and so Mr. Buyer had Power of Attorney to sign the closing documents for her. However, we both learned something new at closing.
To record the POA and the documents to make everything “legit”, the county was charging $92 to record the documents with the government. Two documents costs $46 each in mn, apparently.
So, by not having his wife there, Mr. Buyer had to pay an extra $92 in closing costs just to settle the sale at that particular date and time. Not a huge deal, but 92 bucks is still 92 bucks, right?!
Luckily we had done our homework on the closing costs and we had the seller paying most of his closing cost fees already. So, he only had to come to closing with $13 over what the seller was paying for. Not bad, huh?
Consider this another small example of why you should always ask questions during your home search and home buying process. Knowing more will prevent any surprises like this from coming up during your sale.
