Nearly every mortgage company calls for a signed contract as part of their required documents, however many contracts do not include the few requirements that will make it ‘valid’ for Your Company to get the endorsement that you need. We understand that many contractors and restoration companies have drafted their own contracts, which is completely fine. We are not suggesting to hire a team of high paid lawyers to draft contracts for Your Company, just to add or amend the following into the contract that you are already using.
First, your contract must include a line or space for the total contract amount. This may sound silly for the companies that include this line, but reason that it is omitted from many contracts is because they substitute a line that reads something like ‘total will be based upon insurance estimate.’ This is fine, and refers to a total elsewhere, but will not work to get your check endorsed. To further complicate things, especially for larger claims, contract totals will vary by the end of the job. The easy fix for all of this is to first include a line that reads ‘Contract Total’ with some blank space and then include something like ‘subject to change during the course of repairs’ immediately after.
Second, your contract must include Your Company’s signature and date as well as your customer’s signature and date. Many contractor’s contracts will simply include verbiage in the body that reads ‘by signing you are agreeing to pay Your Company’ and then only include a place for their customer to sign below. This is very commonplace and passable, just amend your contract to include a line somewhere that reads ‘Your Company representative’ or even just ‘Contractor’ and then a line for your signature AND date.
Third, your contract must include the full address of the property where the repairs are taking place. Include this as a line or in the body of the contract, but you must have the street address, city, state and zip in your contract.
To summarize, your contract MUST include the following:
The total amount of the contract, written out numerically
Signatures from both Your Customer and Your Company
Full property address of repairs
Now go and get Your Money Faster.