ShareThisWe've calculated your mortgage rate based on your credit score and debt-to-income ratio. If you'd like to lock this rate in now, go ahead and sign here.
Great! Let's just make sure we have all the information on this loan application. Your Social Security number is here, your present and former addresses are here, and your current employer and laughable monthly salary are listed over here. Just sign right there. Perfect.
Now have you made any decision about your down payment? Of course, 20 percent is preferable in order to avoid PMI and the possibility of our secretary laughing at you. Times being as they are, if you'd like a loan with no money down, we'll have to escort you from the building.
Go ahead and sign here and here to confirm that we will escort you from the building.
This next form breaks down the closing costs. We have the appraisal fee here, the application fee here, the title search, EPA endorsement and soda-machine restocking fee here. Go ahead and give that a sign.
Now, title insurance. We recommend title insurance so that your title will be well insured in the event of flood, hurricane or locusts. Locusts will eat that title right up. If you'd like to waive the insurance, just sign here. Otherwise, sign here, here and on the back of this here.
As a disclosure, my father-in-law does provide our title insurance. In return, he ... well, if he did anything in return, that'd be some kind of conflict of interest, wouldn't it? Right. Just sign here that I've disclosed this.
This here is a disclosure statement outlining your payment schedule. You'll owe 359 monthly payments at this amount, and one final payment at this amount. When you make that final payment, you will be 30 -- 30! -- years older than you are right now. And this box here shows how much poorer you'll be. Go ahead and initial that box, and sign here and here.
This page marks the midway point in the signing process. You don't really need to sign it, but hey, why not. We're on a roll.
Next is the appraisal disclosure. If you sign this, you'll waive your right to receive a copy of the appraisal three days before the closing. To be honest, I don't know why you'd want to do that. This one has never made sense to me. Sign here.
For the Authorization to Release Information, you confirm that your employer may share employment history, income, Internet browsing habits, average bathroom usage and your likelihood of layoff. I already signed this one for you.
We're hitting the home stretch now -- this is the privacy policy. It says we won't directly share any of your financial information with any other parties. I say "directly" because our secretary may indirectly laugh at you in bars, Laundromats and shopping centers for the duration of your mortgage. Sign this one for my kids? Thanks.
Now if you'll just blindly sign these 13 additional documents we'll wrap things up. I'll run this through the right avenues and we'll see you again at the closing next month. In the meantime, be sure to ice and elevate that writing wrist. We've got all kinds of new documents for the closing.
(Ben Grabow writes for the young, the urban and the easily amused. Contact him at thinlyread(at)gmail.com.)
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, http://www.scrippsnews.com)
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