Brett A. Sanidas

Brett Sanidas

Hello, Although I cannot comment on the breakdown of the charges without knowing the exact transaction this references, I apologize that you felt this charge was excessive and would have been happy to discuss it had it been brought up at closing. Discharges that have not been issued and recorded are unfortunately a common problem and can require quite a bit of time and cost incurred on our end to track down and record, especially if the original lender that issued that is no longer in business, or the loan has been sold. My responsibility is to ensure that not only has the original loan been paid in full but that there is a paper trail showing this so that the property has a clear title. Although sometimes buyers and sellers are unaware of the communications that happen between the attorneys and the banks, without either the proper discharges being recorded or the sellers attorney agreeing to undertake the responsibility of the discharges being obtained the closing cannot happen. If my paralegal is unable to track down the discharges on her own, which will often take up hours of her time, we do outsource this to a company who charges $150 per discharge, and then there are recording fees in addition to that. Even still, the lender issuing the discharge is often unable to get these to us in a timely manner and with all our best efforts missing discharges have been known to delay closings weeks and months. We try our hardest to get these for our clients as quickly as we can and I apologize that you felt this was not communicated clearly to you at the time our office handled your closing. Please feel free to give our office a call to discuss this further, as we would have to have a client feel we did not have their best interests at heart.