Maximize Your Efficiency with eSignature Licitness for Letter of Intent

How to eSign a document: eSignature licitness for Letter of Intent

[Music] hey everybody charlie dobbins here i'm on a different uh setup as i normally am with my vlog i normally am in my studio but today i'm actually in the conference room for one of my offices so uh that's why everything's looking a little different from me from what you usually see on my vlog my video blog so i just finished the monday night calm and i want to let you know what we talked about i'm actually going to do a little teaching here on this one it has to do with what not to do with your letter of intent and the reason why i'm teaching this is if you're one of my students if you're in the owner forum you know that you do not send out any document unless i've had an opportunity to look at it i look at all your letters of intent i look at all your purchase and sale agreements we do the due diligence together i look over your shoulder every step of the way and the reason why i've decided to teach this particular lesson tonight is because i see so many stupid mistakes that people are sending out there regarding their letter of intent and i just want them to understand that this is the first chance that many of them are getting out there in the in the business world of multi-family and their offers look silly and i don't want that to happen to you put your best foot forward look professional this is a business treat it like a business don't make stupid mistakes okay so let me uh let me set up my my camera here because we're gonna do a little powerpoint uh presentation uh and i'm gonna put it right up here and let's go through it what i have to do here is is now start to share my screen uh like i did this morning or this afternoon or just now and let me blow it open here for you okay so and the the thing about this conversation is it's all about form not substance the subs i do nice videos on the on the membership site uh to talk to you about uh about the letters of intent and what should be in them and what shouldn't be in them but this is different what i'm talking about here is the actual form of the letter don't look bad even in the form so first off never forget what a letter of intent is it's a business letter and because it's a business letter you've got to write it like it's a letter okay not like it's a uh a little note a memo it's a letter therefore start with a letterhead something nice like don't do this because all you'll never believe it i all of my um uh my resources and archives section i have four standard template letters of intent that you use depending upon what what situation you're in and so when i wrote them i thought i was helping people out by saying hey your company name goes here your company name here you'd never believe it some people actually leave that in there and don't change it and they're about to send it out to a broker no what are you doing that's crazy and how about this one this is another one where it says at the top letter of intent well okay you don't need to tell me that the letter should tell me that you don't have to put that in the header tell me your business name like do something like this your name here and bryanton associates now this is kind of an inside joke if you're in the uniform you know that why that name bryanton is in there but it's kind of an inside joke a little inside baseball that's okay if you don't get it join the uniform you'll love it you'll love it okay so another thing is the business address remember folks it's a letter just like they taught you how to do in high school writing a business letter you gotta put the address in there and you gotta write it like it's a real address we all know how to write an address the same thing you learned about how to write an address in high school needs to be done here folks i can't believe i'm talking to some people this way but i i have to do it it drives me crazy i want them to look good i want my all my my clients and all my students to look good and so therefore have them write it the right way let me make sure to make sure my volume is on all right make it look professional for instance now i made sure that i wasn't trying to call anybody out but i kind of put in here some some uh actual letters i removed as much information as they can so you can't figure out who wrote this but i'm calling them out on it okay so here um look at this check let me go back here check this out i want to show you this is the beginning of someone's letter check this out number one number two number three number four do you know what i'm counting i'm counting all the different fonts that this person has used in the first four lines of the of the letter why why are you doing that it looks silly it looks ridiculous and all they're doing is cut cutting and pasting from other documents and sticking it in here okay don't do it this way if anything all you're gonna do is highlight select all choose one font choose one style boom you're done that's it you look great you your letter looks fantastic okay now take a look at this here's more of the business address look at this this is in the address of the letter now granted it's being delivered via electronic mail that's fine but at the same time we have to write it like it's a letter because that's what it is so therefore why do you put a 2 to this guy like what is this like something you're going to put in a package for him no look at mr she doesn't put the period in the seller owner of record well that's not his real title okay as i am property management llc he might be the president so put down president where is it going there's no address here i don't even know what city the guy lives in and it's got a telephone number you don't put a telephone number in a business at an address on a business letter okay lose it now you can put the email in there because you did say that it's being delivered via electronic mail so here's what it should look like via delivered via usps and electronic mail i mean if the notice section of the purchase and sale agreement says it has to be sent by usps then you better make sure you have that in there and here i've just laid it all out there nice and neat that's what the address section should look like now the subject line here's the thing a lot of people think that that re means reply or respond a response it actually is a legal term that we use uh as i said on the call uh it's it dates back to like 1850. it's latin okay for in ray or as we lawyers say we talk about things in ray uh regarding regarding this subject matter um so re means subject matter um the letter of intent for the purchase of perry apartments let me let me show you my highlights here so that's what that is now take a look here you can you can start to use capitalized terms uh in the subject line and here we do it and this is the way you would do it then it goes at colon okay at colon why would we talk at colon this is a subject line it's a letter there's a period coming up at the very end actually two of them so why are we putting colons in there it looks sloppy so look at this here is what was on the letter that was about to go up that's this is the before here's the after it's got indentation it's lined up perfectly all right we took out the colon we took out the period because that was not the end of the sentence we also took out the usa don't need usa okay that's not what we do when we describe uh where the properties are located and then we added the add the period at the end that's where the last period should go so that's what the subject line should look like in your letter of intent okay now this one drives me batty because when i look at a letter of intent when a student sends me over letter of intent it takes me 30 seconds to go through it i wrote the template i know it should be in there i know how it goes and i know where the students always screw up and it takes me 30 seconds to figure it out but this one always drives me crazy check out this the salutation this letter is going to who who who's it going to mr timothy taylor then why do we call him bob why do we call tim bob okay don't be sloppy read your own letter proof it make sure you did it correctly this is just sloppy don't do it all right now another one has to do with crawf cross references for those of you that are in my program you understand how this works uh in the short form letter of intent that's part of the part of the uh the resources archives the paragraph one talks about the purchase price shows where all the money is coming from we talk about the earnest money deposit now further down in paragraph three we've talked further about the earnest money deposit and exactly how it's supposed to be structured so make sure the two numbers match up now the reason why i caught this because here's what happens when a student sends me a a a a letter of intent or purchase any document i look at the document and i save it as rev revised reviewed ctd that's me and the date and i save it to my my uh air you know the cloud so i have a copy of everything i've ever sent at one of my students in this particular case this student got the deal on a contract and then he says i need you to help me write the purchase and sale agreement i said fine send me over your your updated version of your purchase and sale so i can take a look at you know you put in all the all the changes and then also send me over the letter of intent so i can make sure the two of them speak together because remember the letter of intent is the first thing this is what you guys have agreed to everything that you've agreed to in the letter of intent has to end up in the purchase and sale agreement if it doesn't it doesn't exist so if you ask for seller financing in the letter of intent oh and whoopsy daisy i forgot to put in the purchase and sale agreement and you execute the purchase and sale agreement gone no seller financing so that's why i always have to see the letter of intent with the purchase and sale agreement to match them up so this particular student sends me over the purchase and sale agreement uh and i look at it and i go back okay let me go back and check the earnest money and okay whoa wait a minute you got two different dates and things in here so right away i think that it's my fault that i screwed up when i did the analysis so i go back and i pull up my revised uh file off the cloud and i look at i'm like no i did it right this student never used my version with the seller and so the mistakes he made before all carried over so i can't write the purchase and sale agreement because the numbers are all wrong time wasted now he has to go back to the seller tell him the mistake tell him what changes need to be made you know who's in control of the deal at that point not my student they violated the number one rule all right so this is something that's cross-referencing looking at different name different numbers for the earnest money deposit now folks here read the fine print because it's yours it's your document you wrote the fine print so make sure you read it and you know what you're doing in our all of our documents we send out for the letter of intent the in the last page we include all of the documentation uh that we are going to need to flow through the due diligence period all right same every time and in it you'll see that there's a tax year now remember mine are just templates modify them as you see fit but modify them don't leave the wrong year in there what some of my students have done is they've taken my documents and they've fixed it so they work for all future events like the tax assessment for the current year okay that works you'll never have to change it again but for some students they just never change this it drives me crazy remember it's a template but don't make it look like one and here's what i mean this is one of our templates look at they have all these lines in there well those lines are things that you're supposed to fill in not leave them there once you fill it in remove the line clean it up this thing is crazy it doesn't make any sense can you imagine sending this out on your letterhead oh the guy's going to take one look at you saying boot camp you know what i'm talking about right all right tbd is okay for a broker but not for you tbd to be determined by market what's the price tbd by market all right fine mr broker we'll figure it out but when you're sending out an loi don't say tbd anywhere in it put the answer in there now i i talked about this with the uh you know for instance here it is with the uh with the title company this is what the guy put in there and then he left the line underneath it afterwards here's the thing you're in control stay in control tell him who you want to use for your title company we'll get one you're eventually going to have to so why not now the most important thing here is their title insurance company not the title closing company okay you always want to choose your title insurance company because the seller shouldn't care he's paying for the premium but all companies premiums are exactly the same by law so it doesn't matter which company if he's i want to i want i want to uh you to buy shifting stands mutual because my buddy uh is an agent for them no i'm buying chicago title well that's not i'm the one paying for it no you're paying you're paying it for it but you're not going to choose who the insurance company is because long after you're gone and i have a title insurance claim that insurance company better be around and i'll that's why i want to do business with with one of the five top title companies all right so that is how we do it folks i think that's about it yeah we're right back to the right back to the very beginning let me stop sharing my screen so that's what we talked about uh on the call tonight if you want to find out more about the owner forum uh just drop us a line at info at multifamilyinvestingacademy.com check on multifamilyinvestingacademy.com for my upcoming events um i might be coming to a a city or town near you and i'd love to meet you i'd love to get to know you and come to one of my events are a lot of fun and you will learn a ton about multifamily you