Notarize Blog

Changing an industry is no easy feat. Not only are you changing the way that businesses operate, which in our case, has been done the same way for hundreds of years, but you’re also changing consumer behavior. You’re entrusted with major moments in people’s lives, on the pursuit to build a better way for technology to deliver an experience built for the digital age.

Along our journey, we’ve been fortunate enough to partner with the nation’s largest homebuilder, real estate company and fastest-growing lenders. Today, we added the nation’s largest title company to the list, Fidelity. Together, we’re excited to transform the way people buy and sell homes across the country.

Kelley Cooper Spencer never wants to sign a piece of paper ever again. In fact, Thrive Mortgage COO Selene Srnensky Kellam has told Spencer and her colleagues that she will only eClose her personal mortgage loans in the future. Becoming a fully digital mortgage company, thus, wasn’t just an ambition: it was foundational to the DNA of the Thrive Mortgage family.

“We wanted to lead the mortgage industry in how we helped homebuyers get into their homes,” said Spencer. “And if we could do it well – if we could move the mortgage industry – then we could help shift every other industry away from paper and manual processes.”

When Virginia passed the first bill on remote online notarization back in 2011, they authorized their notaries to serve anyone, anywhere and unleashed the ability for people nationwide to get a document notarized entirely online. However, Iowa has been the one state whose law was written such that it specifically conditioned acceptance of out-of-state notarizations, denying online notarizations.

Today we’re excited to share that is no longer the case, and even better: the Iowa legislature has voted to rescind these laws in favor of remote online notarization legislation.

We're only three months into 2019, but this year has already been one of many firsts. Six states have passed remote online notarization legislation, and Minnesota completed its first online closing.

Today, not only are we excited to share that Tennessee Title Services has completed the first online closing in the Volunteer State, but that they’re committed to doing more than 50 over the next year.

On a day when wind chills in Minnesota reached 55 degrees below zero and UPS was closed for safety reasons, Notarize, Redfin, Westcor, and TitleOne completed what we believe is the state’s first online closing. A California home buyer used a Virginia notary to close on their home less than a month after Minnesota’s remote online notarization law went into effect.

Real estate agents helped sell nearly six million homes in 2017, guiding buyers through one of life's most stressful moments. But as competition rises across the mortgage industry, agents are feeling the pressure to connect clients to a simpler, more seamless home buying experience.

It’s conference season in the real estate industry, bringing professionals from around the country to discuss how new technologies, public policies, and strategies will shape the mortgage landscape.

And no conference is bigger than the Mortgage Bankers Association annual convention, which will take place in Washington, D.C. from October 14-17. Thousands of industry leaders will head to the nation’s capital for what MBA calls its most “Monumental” conference yet.