Mid-Atlantic multiple listing service Metropolitan Regional Information Systems Inc. and settlement services firm Federal Title & Escrow Co. have launched a desktop and mobile app to offer closing cost estimates to MRIS’ 44,000 members.
The app, MRIS Close It!, allows agents to calculate cash-to-close and net proceeds for real estate transactions. Users can instantly create, edit and share nonbinding HUD-1 Settlement Statements and net sales sheets for their buyer and seller clients.
“MRIS Close It! accurately answers questions real estate agents commonly hear such as ‘How much cash do I need to close?’ and ‘How much can I expect to net from the sale of my home?'” said Andrew Strauch, MRIS’ vice president of product innovation, in a statement.
“Through this new core product, our customers now have the ability to quickly and easily answer these questions for homebuyers and sellers on the fly.”
MRIS Close It! is available to MRIS subscribers at no additional cost and can be accessed via a desktop, iPhone or iPad device. The app is a customized, specially licensed version of Federal Title’s consumer-facing Close It! app, which the company says has been downloaded more than 10,000 times since its May 2013 launch. MRIS users will be able to generate PDF reports with agent and office contact information from the app, save their reports to the cloud, and email them directly to clients.
Like the Close It! app, the MRIS version allows users to compare closing costs in different jurisdictions and show the difference in closing on the first of the month compared to at the end of the month, MRIS and Federal Title said.
Agents can input a purchase price, mortgage rate and down payment amount for their clients and differentiate between loans backed by the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), loans backed by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and cash purchases.
“We created the most accurate app on the market that simplifies the closing process,” said Federal Title founder Todd Ewing in a statement. “It removes the guesswork from the equation and is the ultimate closing costs calculator.”
Federal Title claims to be the largest independently owned title company in Washington, D.C. MRIS Close It! covers 67 of 95 MRIS jurisdictions in Maryland, Washington, D.C., and Virginia.
Other MLSs can license Federal Title’s Close It! app, but the app currently covers only Maryland, Washington, D.C., Virginia and Florida, so Federal Title would need to work with the MLS to build out the app, the company said.
Over the summer, closing cost data and technology firm ClosingCorp launched a tool, Seller Net Sheet, that’s designed to calculate the seller’s estimated net closing proceeds for any property in the nation using actual rates for settlement services in their market, and gives users the ability to create and compare up to three different transaction scenarios and view them side by side.
