Sign Quitclaim Deed

How to eSign a document: how to do a quick claim deed

hey there this is stuff from the art tips are blog and in this video I just want to give you a really quick overview of what a quitclaim deed is when it makes sense to use it and how you can put one together if that's something you want to do so a quick claim deed is essentially a document that is used to transfer the ownership of real estate from one person or entity to another person or entity and most of the time when people are buying houses and rental properties and other investments the most common type of deed that people use is called a warranty deed and that's a deed where the seller is essentially promising that they have totally free and clear title to the property and they are conveying it to that new buyer and there's no title defects on records so nobody else has any ownership and it liens on the property or anything that would encroach they're totally unencumbered ownership of that particular property in the vast majority of cases when people are using warranty deeds there's also a title insurance policy involved so essentially there's a third party who has reviewed the entire title history and they're willing to back up the fact that the title is indeed free and clear and there's no encroachments or issues on that and that's why a lot of times sellers are comfortable making that promise because there's a title company that's going to back them up if any mistakes were made with a quick claim deed the seller is not making any promises or guarantees of any kind regarding the title they're essentially just saying everything that I own of this property if anything I'm now transferring to you mr. buyer so essentially if you as the seller have no idea if the title is clear or not this is the kind of deed that you would most likely want to use because you don't have to make any promises as to whether or not there are any issues that have come up in the past a lot of times people use quitclaim deeds when they're transferring properties between family members or in like divorce situations when one person is going to relinquish their ownership to the other person that's usually the kind of situation when quitclaim deeds get involved or in cases where the seller literally has no idea what's going on in the title history and they're not getting a title policy they're not making any guarantees and usually as a result the buyer is paying a very very low price and or they've done their own title research to verify that that title is free and clear so using quick clean beads a lot of times title companies really don't like that because it basically opens up this can of worms in a sense showing that hey somebody sold this property without making any promises so it is actually possible for that to cause issues in the future and in the title even if it didn't actually create a cloud on the title a lot of times title companies and underwriters will look at that as an issue simply because there was no promise made in that transfer so that's just something to keep in mind but really a quick claim deed is a very very simple document and it's just saying that you know whatever person a Owen's of the property they're now transferring to person B just to give you an idea for how loose a quick clean deed actually is I can fill out a quick claim bead for a property that I don't own and convey it to somebody else because I'm not making any promises I'm just saying that everything I own of that property if anything even if it's nothing I am transferring to this other person so hopefully that gives an idea of what a quitclaim deed really means and what kind of situations it may or may not be appropriate in and if you're looking for a state-specific quick claim deed template that you can use to fill out for yourself there's actually all kinds of websites out there where you can pay to download templates and just fill in the blanks yourself and do it that way there's another website that I've been using lately called a Rocket Lawyer and they have a very very nice easy-to-use system where you literally just fill out a questionnaire and fill in the blanks and it generates the document for you so if that's something you want to use I just want to give you a really quick tour of how that works and just how easy it is you definitely don't have to use it and again I'm not saying if in a way you should be using a quick clean beat at all that's something you should probably talk to an attorney about if you have any questions about the appropriateness of this particular type of deed but if you know this is what you want to use and you're just looking for the easiest way to fill one out I just want to show you how Rocket Lawyer works and you can decide for yourself if this is the route you want to go so follow along with me and I will create a quick claim deed for you in just the next few minutes and you can see what I'm talking about it's it's a really nice easy-to-use tool so let's go check it out okay so I'm actually going to include a link to this exact page beneath this video so if you want to follow along with me and fill up a quick claim deed for yourself with your own property specific information you can feel free to do that once you click on that link it will take you to this exact page it should look something like this and all you have to do is start off by picking the state in which your property is located so in this example I'm just going to click California and then we'll click make document and the first question it asks us is what is the location of the property being granted so if we've gotten address we would just go ahead and put that address in here so I'll just kind of make up a fictitious one here and click continue and who is preparing this quick claim deed since I'm the one preparing it I'm just going to go ahead and put my name in here once I got the information we'll go ahead and click continue then is this property located in an unincorporated area basically what this means is if your property is located within the boundaries of a city or a township or a parish or anything that has like an organized structure government to it then your answer would be no but if it happens to be a property that's like way out in the middle of nowhere and there's no municipal body that's overseeing that in that case you would click yes and that's going to be fairly rare depending on where your property is so in this case I'm just going to go ahead and leave it as known click continue and then who is granting the property in this situation I'm going to say that I personally am selling this property to somebody else so I will just leave it as an individual person if you want it to include a business or a trust or any of these other options you could just click those as well and based on which one you pick it will ask you more scenario specific questions throughout the rest of this sort of changes based on how you answer these questions that continue again then what does the grantor his name I'll just put my name here and then is Seth Williams married I will say yes I am and I'm also keep in mind as you're going through this if you ever have any questions or get stuck like say you just don't understand how to fill it out it's really really easy to just go ahead and ask a question right here in Rocket Lawyer well actually shoot that to a lawyer and they will respond to you and help answer your questions that's really a nice thing you're not necessarily on your own when you're filling this out you get stuck you can get help but also if for instance you don't have all the information yet it's still possible to create this document and just simply skip certain items so let's just say for example we're going to skip this one and what it's going to do is in the end result when it creates this document it's just going to have blanks there so we can sort of fill this in by hand or edit the final Word document when we do get that information so just keep that in mind you don't necessarily have to be equipped with a hundred percent of the information in order to complete this process so let's just skip this one and move on and then where will Seth Williams sign the quick claim deed I'm going to say I'm going to sign this in Michigan in Kent County and the reason this isn't asking that is so that it helps us fill out the notary block when the deed gets notarized click continue and Grand Tour is based on the dowry laws which can vary by state some states require that say if I owned a property and it was just in my name but I happen to be married my wife basically automatically has ownership in that property just by the fact that she's married to me so she would have to sign this as well in the transfer process even though it was never really titled in her name so part of this she'll have to understand what the laws are in your state based on whether or not you need to do that in this case just to keep it simple I'm going to just leave it as me but that's just something to be aware of if you are in that kind of situation you may be required to get the spouse's signature as well if the state laws require that so just keep that in mind and then who is being granted the property we're just going to say we're renting this to an individual and that grantees name is we're going to say John Smith then is John Smith single or married we'll say that he's single and was the physical street address of the grantee just make something up here and continue and then when will the transfer take effect I'll just put a January 1 2017 that'll be our closing date now what does the tax or Assessors parcel number this is something that you can either find on the previous deed of record or you can usually find it on the county's website or if you subscribe to any kind of real estate data service like agent pro 24/7 or real quests or anything like that you can usually find those numbers there so I'm just going to make up a number here and then we'll click click continue and what's the legal description just like the previous item you can usually find this on the county website or on the previous deed of record if you have any questions on that so I'll just kind of make something up here so much that's done we'll click continue again and then is money being exchanged for the transfer of the property now a lot of times when people use quitclaim deeds say if they're transferring it between family members in those situations it's not uncommon for no money to be changing hands or a very very small amount so you could put like one dollar like it says here in this example or if it's a lot more than that then obviously you would just put whatever that amount is in this case we'll say yes and we'll say $100 and then what does the name and address of the person receiving future tax statements for the property so in this case we're just going to put that same buyers address because he's going to be the person paying those tax bills going forward go ahead and click continue here and then check the box next to any statement applying to this deed so this is an area where Rocket Lawyer gets into some of the state specific issues that can come up in California and this is something that you wouldn't necessarily know if you were just working with some generic templates so that's one of the areas where Rocket Lawyer is kind of nice to work with so if any of these would apply just go ahead and read through them and check anything that's applicable if not you just leave it as none of the above and click continue and then what is the value of the property being transferred we're going to get just say $100 again if you had gotten an appraisal on the property and you got a specific value you could put that here or if you had a specific assessed value in mind from the county you could put that here as well if you don't have any of that information then you could literally just put the amount that's being paid and that would work too and then is the grantee assuming any debts attached to the property in this case we're going to go ahead and say no click continue does the grantor wish to reserve any interest in the properties oil gas or other mineral rights I'm going to say no in this case but if for some reason you wanted to hold those back you could do that here does the grantor wish to reserve a life estate interest in the property being transferred I'm going to say no in this case keep in mind all these questions as you've probably seen have a pretty good explanation just explaining what it means and how you may or may not want to answer some of these questions and again keep in mind if you get stuck on anything you can always just ask a question over here and then who should the original deed of the property be returned to in this case I would usually put the name of the buyer because they're going to be the owner going forward and this is something that they're probably don't want for their records you'd go ahead and put that in there and then it will go ahead and generate this document for us as you can see all I got to do just scroll through here and it shows you the exact document and you can download this in the form of PDF or as a Word document that's usually what I would do but that's just me because I can edit it in the future and do other things if I want to change it around and then when we open this up we can go ahead and just get a good view of it and we can go through here and edit things if we want we can highlight and delete things can change things around if we need to and something you'll notice here right here we've got a bunch of blanks this was that question where I just chose to skip it rather than filling out the information so that's what happens when you don't answer all the questions that we'll just leave those blanks and then you can either handwrite them in or go ahead and type that information in once you have the word back and then this is the notary block I mean it's really just very simple and straightforward and easy to do and that's really what I like about Rocket Lawyer is that it just makes the process very easy whereas when you're using a blank template it's kind of up to you to make sure you're filling out all the details and not missing anything which I found is actually surprisingly easy to do especially when you're not familiar with deeds and you don't do this on a regular basis or even when you do this kind of thing requires a lot of attention to detail to make sure you get all the information right and don't miss anything so if you're interested in Rocket Lawyer there are a couple different pricing plans and it's set up as a subscription you can either do it monthly this is the one that I've got right now the 39.95 per month or if you pay annually you can save 20% on that if this is something that you know you're going to be using again and again keep in mind if you just need like one document one time and that's it you're never going to need this again it's totally feasible to just sign up for one month and then unsubscribe and then if you ever need to come back it's very easy to do that that cost for one month is pretty comparable to the cost you're going to find for a lot of the blank templates out there that are harder to fill out anyway so it's not like it's a worse deal necessarily than some of the less user-friendly options out there and again in terms of the appropriateness of using a quick clean deed I can't answer that question for you because I don't know anything about your situation that's something where if you're not sure about it you would have to talk to an attorney and verify that you're working with all the right information and all the right language because there are some cases where there are some even more specific things that should be included in a deed and Rocket Lawyer may not necessarily be able to do that so I'm not saying that you should not get legal help because you should if you need that but if you're just looking for a quick easy boilerplate no-frills kind of approach to creating this kind of document for the least amount of money I think a racket lawyer is a great way to do that and I've been using it in many many cases and I've found it to be a very viable solution in not all but in many situations that I've worked with so there's Rocket Lawyer for you that's how you can do a quick clean bead with them hopefully you find that helpful on some level I'm going to have an affiliate link beneath this video and if you sign up through that link I will get a small commission on that so I just want to totally disclose that and again Rocket Lawyer is not the perfect fit for everybody but I think it's a lot of cases it can be a great option for people who just need a quick simple easy user friendly way to get this kind of thing done so thanks for watching and hopefully I'll see you again soon