- [Jared] Well hey there, everybody.
This is Jared from Retipster.com.
And today, I wanna introduce you to a really powerful tool
that I use almost every day in my real estate business.
It's called Simplifile,
and it's actually a service that allows you
to record legal documents with the county,
like deeds, for example, 100 percent online.
For those of you who do the majority
of your real estate transactions
through a title company, or closing attorney,
then you've probably never dealt with
the headache of having to record a deed
with the local recording office.
But, if you're like me
and you close a large majority of your deals on your own,
what I'm about to show you
may just be a game changer for your business.
Having to either go in person to the county,
or mail in the deed and supporting documents needed
to record the purchase of a property successfully,
has always been a super frustrating bottleneck
in my business.
I feel like doing anything traditional mail
is just a stressor for me.
Call me a millennial, but having to lick a stamp
and put it on an envelope, and send it in the mail,
is just a cumbersome process from beginning to end.
And, another aspect that's extremely frustrating
is that each county has a slightly different price
they charge for recording fees.
So, if you underpay, your stuff's gonna get returned.
And if you overpay,
typically they don't return your change.
You're just outta luck.
So, before I log in
and give you kind of the lay of the land here,
I wanna address a couple things
related to their sign up process,
and how Simplifile works in general.
First, how you sign up is by submitting your information
on their Get Connected page.
So, let's go check that out right now.
Now, you simply fill out your information here.
Select what kinda organization type you are.
For those watching from the REtipster community,
the most relevant will probably be
the real estate office option.
If you prefer, you don't even have to
submit your information here, you could call them.
But, the key take-away is that
this isn't something that you can just sign up
arbitrarily to, you're actually gonna have to
go through an an application process,
and they're gonna have to vet you.
Now, for real estate professionals,
you do not have to be a licensed real estate agent
in order to use their system.
Investors are 100 percent okay,
but one of the main reasons
why they have an application process
is that they require you to actually be a business entity,
and though require that you submit proof
that your business entity exists.
Regarding price, it doesn't really cost anything
to use Simplifile, which is actually a pretty big plus.
If I understand it correctly,
they make money by taking a percentage
of the fee you payed the county,
once you've successfully recorded your documents
through their system.
Something else to be aware of
is that not every county takes Simplifile.
So, depending on what county you do business in
will determine whether or not you can use their system.
I found them so helpful that I actually made it a rule
that I don't do any direct mail
in counties that don't accept Simplifile.
For me, it's that powerful.
Once you've applied and your account is approved,
all you have to do is
add the counties you wanna do business in.
Typically, adding new counties
is a simple as a click of a button,
but some markets are more strict,
or have more of a vetting process than others.
So, depending on where you do business,
they might require you to sign an agreement,
or provide further supporting documentation
in order for you to utilize Simplifile within that county.
What's nice though, is that whatever's required
for you to do business in that county,
will be provided for you clearly
through the Simplifile Dashboard.
So, it's always a pretty seamless process.
So with that, let's go ahead and log in,
and let me show you around.
Okay, now that we're logged in,
the very first thing we're going to see is the activity feed
for all of our recorded documents.
For me, these all happen to be deeds,
but you'll see shortly
there are a number of different types
of documents you can record through Simplifile.
Today, I actually have a deed I need to record,
so I'll be using that as an example to show you the process.
But, before we go ahead and do that,
there is one section, on the left here, I wanna show you.
So, how you would add new counties is
you would go to this counties tab,
and then, as you can see,
I'm actually currently approved
for all of the counties in Florida
and Indiana, that take Simplifile.
And if I wanted to register more counties,
I would just go here to this button
that says register more counties.
And then, I could go to any one of these states here,
and then select a county individually.
Or, right here on the right hand side is a button
that let's me select all of the counties
for a particular state.
And then, if the particular state
that you're doing business in, like I said,
requires further documentation, or some other process,
then Simplifile will let you know.
So, now that we've gone through that,
let me take you through the process
of actually recording a deed.
So, the deed that I'm gonna be recording
is actually for Saint Johns County.
And then, I'm gonna come here to package name,
and then I'm just gonna name it St. Johns,
just for the sake of example, St. John Deed.
And, here is where you select
what kind of document you're gonna be recording.
And as you can see, you can do an affidavit,
an agreement, an assignment,
a number of different things.
A death certificate, there is several different types
of documents that you can record here.
And, each county will add
or subtract the different document types
that they will allow you to record through Simplifile.
So, for my purposes, I'm just gonna go here to deed,
and then proceed to add document to package.
I'm gonna go ahead and select this.
This is on my desktop.
And then, all I have to do here is in the grantors section,
I just have to put down who the grantor is,
who the grantee is,
and then put the consideration amount.
So, very simply,
and then I select add,
and then grantee.
Now, something that I wanna mention
about the consideration amount.
I found it custom, at least in Indiana,
to put the consideration amount on the deed
as either $1 or $10 dollars.
But, I've gotten a couple rejections due to this issue.
It may just be a Florida-specific thing,
but according to some of the recording offices
of the counties I've worked in,
they are now making it mandatory
to add the actual purchase price as the consideration.
So, that's what I'm gonna be doing in today's video.
Now that I've done that, I can go ahead
and proceed to the next step,
but before I do that,
I wanna just talk about some of the options up here
that are really, really handy.
I'm not, by any means,
condoning that you should change legal documents,
I'm just saying that
it's interesting that they have some erasers here
where you can come here and
you can erase some of things here on the document,
and then hit apply.
There are some pretty nifty tools that are here.
Now that we've gone through all that,
I'm gonna go ahead and hit done.
Now that this is ready,
all I have to do is hit the submit button.
I tell it to notify me
when this package is recorded or rejected.
And then, I hit submit.
And then you'll see here, at the top,
that this is now set as sent.
There's a couple things that can happen at this point.
One is that the county can actually reject the deed
if there was a mistake on there,
maybe the legal description is off,
maybe there's some discrepancy.
They can reject it after they've reviewed it,
and then let me know why they rejected it.
And then, I can do what I have to do to correct the error.
Or, they could just simply accept it,
and then once it's accepted, it's going to sit in my account
just like these other ones,
with a nice green button that says recorded.
And there you have it, guys.
As you can see, Simplifile is an extremely powerful tool.
Now, when I do a closing through a mobile notary
outside of a title company,
I don't even have to pay for a return envelope
for them to send me back the original deed
with the wet signature.
I just have them simply scan
and email me a copy,
and then I keep that for my records.
And then, I use that to file with Simplifile.
So, it's saved me money on closing fees.
It's a very seamless process,
I don't have to deal with the cumbersome process
of sending something out in the mail.
A ton of different ways Simplifile has been
just a win win win across the board for me.
So, I hope you guys have found this video helpful.
For more tips, tricks, and real world guidance
on how to crush it as a real estate investor,
come and join us over at REtipster.com.