NoteHarbor blog
Notes, serviced
without the guesswork.
Practical writing for people who hold paper: how payments actually apply, what an escrow analysis owes a borrower, why payoff quotes get disputed, and what January looks like when December went well.
Educational only. Nothing here is legal, tax, or accounting advice.
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RSS feedMortgage escrow software: what an escrow analysis has to produce
An escrow analysis is not arithmetic on a tax bill. It projects a full year of disbursements, finds the lowest point the account would hit, adds the cushion, and turns the result into a new payment plus a shortage or a surplus you can send a borrower.
- escrow
- compliance
- servicing
Note investors: servicing a book you bought, not one you made
You did not originate these notes, you bought them, often at a discount and sometimes a slice at a time. That changes four things origination tools never answer: your basis, your real yield, a partial position, and the tax on the discount.
- servicing
- taxes
- payments
Private lending software: what a loan tracker will not do
A tracker stores terms and a balance. Servicing derives the accrual, applies each payment in the order the note sets, and produces documents other people rely on. Here are the four moments the difference stops being academic.
- servicing
- payments
- escrow
- taxes
Loan servicing software for private lenders: what it has to do
A private lender's servicing system has eight jobs, and most of them are defined by a federal rule rather than by a feature list. Here is what each one has to get right, and how to tell during a trial whether a product actually does.
- servicing
- compliance
- escrow
NoteSmith alternative: what to check before you switch
If you are shopping for a NoteSmith alternative, six questions decide whether the move is worth it: who owns the data, how the software is licensed, where the 1098s come from, what borrowers can see, how credit reporting is produced, and who answers when a number does not tie.
- servicing
- compliance
- taxes
How to switch from NoteSmith without losing your loan history
Moving a note book is mostly a data problem. Here is which export to run, what the importer proves before anything is written, exactly what carries over from a NoteSmith payment history file, and the parity checks worth doing before you retire the old system.
- servicing
- payments
- taxes
What servicing your own notes actually costs
Three ways to service a note book, priced honestly: a spreadsheet you maintain, a program you license per machine, and a subscription. The software line is usually the smallest number in the total. Here is where the rest of the money goes.
- spreadsheets
- servicing
- taxes
1098s and 1099 INTs for note holders: the January checklist
Which form goes with which situation, what has to be true before you can produce either one, and the December work that makes January short.
- taxes
- seller finance
- compliance
Late fees on seller financed notes: grace periods, caps, and what your note actually says
How a late fee clause is built, which limits sit on top of it, and the questions to bring to your attorney before you assess or waive one.
- late fees
- seller finance
- compliance
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