How Badly Has TRID Delayed Home Sale Closings?

Every buyer getting a mortgage loan today needs to conform to TRID.

TRID is hardly the OMG everybody feared. Although mortgages have become much more complicated as time marches on. Back in the late 1970s and early 1980s, I used to process mortgages as a side business for some of my real estate clients. That meant I collected the application and financing documents, prepared a quick disclosure and collected a fee. Not so anymore, and it seems so long ago that the type of process I just described is like third-grade handwriting, a thing of the past. Nope, today the entire system has been overhauled in a major upheaval in an attempt to better disclose and simplify. It’s called TRID. The new TILA RESPA Integrated Disclosures.

If you ask Dan Tharp at Guild Mortgage, he will tell you that his associate Kim Hedges coined the acronym: The Reason I Drink. I’m not so sure though that a bunch of other people didn’t all come up with it at the same time, it’s that self-explanatory and a good jingle. Maybe Kim did originate it, but I can tell you that in many ways, TRID has changed how we do business. Today, only the educated and systems-guided professionals are able to provide a streamlined process for TRID. Everybody else is left to fend for themselves. And that’s a lot of professionals.

A few weeks ago, Mortgage News Daily picked up a report from Ellie Mae that noted TRID caused the average closing time to increase to an average of 49 days, which breaks down to an average 3-day bump. My own mortgage loan in Hawaii delayed our closing by four days, and our MLO called the file a slam-dunk. So, go figure.

I’ve had several clients last December whose files were delayed, one by more than 30 days, but most of those were due to taking borrowers off title, adding borrowers to title, and general overall lender screw-ups that should have been handled way in advance of ever going into contract, but I digress. At least they closed in 2015, which was a saving grace.

Today, the best way to assure you’ll close on time according to TRID is to make sure your MLO and escrow company are in sync with each other. I hear there are some escrow and title companies who are still not on board with TRID, and a number of MLOs who don’t have the process down pat, either. You can rest assured that Daniel Tharp at Guild Mortgage has all of his ducks in a row. I never see any mistakes from him or his team.