Questions
Asked before, answered plainly.
Everything people usually want to know about contract servicing and escrow. If your question isn’t here, call (801) 627-6800 — we’d rather explain now than surprise you later.
The basics
- What does a contract servicing company actually do?
We act as a neutral third party for contracts where one private party pays another over time — most often seller-financed real estate. We collect each payment, apply it to the balance, send both parties monthly statements, manage late notices and reserves, hold documents, and file year-end IRS reporting. Both sides get one accurate, impartial record instead of two competing ones.
- Who uses this service?
Buyers and sellers in seller-financed sales, private lenders and borrowers, landlords with long-term leases, families formalizing loans between relatives, and the attorneys and title companies who advise them. If payments happen on a schedule between two parties, servicing fits.
- What kinds of contracts can you service?
Real estate contracts and trust deed notes are the majority, but we also service personal loans, business loans, car loans, equipment contracts, leases, and rentals.
Payments & statements
- How do I make my payments?
At our Ogden office, by mail to our payment address, online, or with automatic withdrawal. However you pay, the payment posts to your account and both parties’ statements reflect it.
- Will I get a statement?
Yes — both the payor and the payee receive monthly statements showing the payment received, and if applicable, how it was applied between principal and interest, and the current balance.
- What happens if a payment is late?
We send late notices and assess whatever late fee your contract itself provides.
- Do you handle property taxes and insurance?
When the contract calls for it, we collect monthly reserves along with the regular payment and upon presentment pay the tax and insurance bills from those reserves when they come due.
- What about year-end tax reporting?
We prepare and file the required year-end IRS interest reporting for the account, and both parties receive the figures they need for their returns each January.
Setting up
- What does it cost?
A one-time setup fee when the account opens, then a flat servicing fee tied to how often payments come in. Every amount is published on our schedule of fees — no percentages and nothing hidden.
- Who pays the servicing fee — buyer or seller?
That’s up to your contract. Many parties split the fee evenly; others assign it to one side. We follow whatever the contract or the collection agreement directs.
- How do we get started?
Both parties sign our collection agreement — it’s on the forms page — and send it to us with a copy of your note or contract and all supporting documents. We open the account, confirm to both parties, and take it from there. The how it works page walks through each step.
- Our contract is already years old. Can you take it over?
Yes. We can begin servicing an existing contract mid-stream — we set up the ledger from the contract terms and the payment history you provide, and service it from there like any other account.
Escrow & security
- What is a document escrow?
Signed originals — a deed, a release, a title — are deposited with us alongside written instructions. When the contract’s conditions are met, we release or deliver them exactly as instructed. Neither party has to trust the other to ‘do the paperwork later.’
- You’re hired by one side — how are you neutral?
Our engagement is with the contract, not with either party, and our collection agreement is signed by both. We apply payments and instructions as written, both parties see identical records, and we don’t profit from anything except the published service fee.
- How long have you been doing this?
Escrow Specialists has serviced contracts continuously from Ogden, Utah since 1981 — through every market since. Many of our accounts have run for decades, some across generations of the same family.
Still have a question?
Ask it directly — a person who can open your file will answer.