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Kooky
Builder of Shaka, the payment router that pays every agent their commission on closing date.
About Kooky and Shaka →Mortgage Connect, a company based in Moon Township, Pennsylvania, that works for mortgage lenders and servicers, has bought a majority interest in Stavvy, a platform for electronic closings and electronic notes. The company announced the purchase in a press release dated 6 October 2026 and did not disclose the price.
Stavvy will not carry on as a separate operation. According to the release, its business will be combined with Simply Secure Sign, the eClosing product Mortgage Connect already runs, and Stavvy's leadership and employees are joining the buyer. The trade publication National Mortgage Professional reported the deal on 7 October, and the American Land Title Association carried a summary in its TitleNews on 8 October.
The announcement is a company's account of its own transaction, and it should be read that way. It is still a useful moment to look at how a home loan closing is put together in the United States when part or all of it happens on a screen: which pieces exist, who holds them, and what the rules of the secondary mortgage market say about them.
What Mortgage Connect bought
Mortgage Connect, LP describes itself in the release as a company with employees in 40 states that serves 19 of the top 20 lenders and servicers in the United States. That last figure is the company's own and is not checked by a third party in the material published so far.
What it has acquired is a majority interest in the Stavvy platform, not the whole of it. The published accounts do not say what share of the platform remains with other holders, and no price is given. What it does describe is the plan: Stavvy's operations are to be combined with Simply Secure Sign, and the people who built Stavvy move across with it.
Related readHow a Fully Digital Property Sale Works in Dubai Through Dubai NowThe two products cover different parts of a closing. Simply Secure Sign is the part where documents are signed and notarised. Stavvy, by the release's description, adds the part where the loan's key document is created in electronic form, stored and registered. The table sets out what the company says each side brings.
| Product | Role in a closing | Functions named in the release |
|---|---|---|
| Simply Secure Sign | Signing and notarisation | Remote online notarisation, in-person electronic notarisation, hybrid and traditional paper closings |
| Stavvy | The electronic loan file | SMART Doc generation, eNote execution, eVault custody, MERS eRegistry registration and transfer |
Source: Mortgage Connect press release, 6 October 2026. Company description, not independently verified.
Jeff Coury, the chief executive of Mortgage Connect, put the aim in one line. Bringing Simply Secure Sign and Stavvy together, he said in remarks carried by National Mortgage Professional, creates a more complete digital mortgage platform. Kyle Stephenson, Stavvy's chief executive, said in the release that his company had built the technology around eNotes, eVaults and digital collateral.
Four ways to close one loan
A closing is the meeting, physical or not, at which the borrower signs the loan documents and the transaction is completed. The release names four forms it can take, and the names tell most of the story.
A traditional closing, often called a wet closing, is signed in ink on paper. In an in-person electronic notarisation, known in the trade as IPEN, the notary and the signer are together but the documents are electronic. In a remote online notarisation, or RON, the notarial act is carried out at a distance. A hybrid closing mixes the methods.
Not every loan can use every method. That is the point of one feature the release puts forward: the combined platform is to use what the company calls digital eligibility technology to route each loan to a full RON closing, an IPEN closing, a hybrid closing or a wet closing. The company says this will apply across purchase loans, refinances, home equity loans and loss mitigation.
Related readPaying for a Dubai property: cheques, transfer limits and escrowThe published accounts do not explain how the routing decides, or which data it reads. What can be said from the published rules is why such a decision is needed at all: whether a loan may be notarised remotely depends on the state, on the type of loan and on whether the county recorder accepts the result. Those conditions are set out further down.
The eNote, the eVault and the registry
The second half of the deal concerns the loan's note. In a paper closing the note is a signed sheet that someone must keep safe. An eNote is a note created and signed in electronic form, and the vocabulary around it follows from that.
The release lists four functions Stavvy performs. SMART Doc generation produces the electronic documents. eNote execution is the signing of the note itself. eVault custody is the storage of the signed eNote. MERS eRegistry registration and transfer covers registering the eNote on the MERS eRegistry and recording its transfer.
Mortgage Connect says Stavvy provides eNotes and loan documents for all 50 states, and that it supports digital collateral including second liens such as home equity lines of credit, known as HELOCs. Again, these are the company's statements about its own product.
One rule from Fannie Mae frames all of this. Its Selling Guide, in section A2-4.1-03 on electronic records, signatures and transactions, in the version dated 6 May 2026, says a paper note cannot be converted into an eNote. The choice between paper and electronic is therefore made before the borrower signs, not afterwards. The same section says eNotes need special approval from Fannie Mae, so a lender cannot simply start delivering them.
Related readNew South Wales without paper title deeds: what replaced the certificateOn cost, National Mortgage Professional, in its July coverage of eNote guidance from MISMO, the body whose standards the Fannie Mae guide refers to, estimated fulfilment savings of about US$200 to US$300 per loan. That is a trade-press estimate, not a measured figure from this transaction.
What the rules say
The Fannie Mae Selling Guide matters because lenders who sell loans to Fannie Mae must follow it. Section A2-4.1-03, dated 6 May 2026, sets several conditions for remote online notarisation.
The system used must comply with the MISMO RON Standards, Version 2.0; the guide says the July 2025 draft of that version applies until a final one is published. The notary must be licensed in the state where the notarial act is performed, and must be physically located there. The record must carry a tamper-sealed audit trail. The county recorder must accept the document. And remote online notarisation is not permitted on Texas Section 50(a)(6) loans.
A borrower cannot be required to close remotely
Fannie Mae's Selling Guide, section A2-4.1-03 dated 6 May 2026, says borrowers cannot be required to use remote notarisation. It applies to loans sold to Fannie Mae; other investors and each state set their own conditions.
The rules have also moved this year. According to the American Land Title Association's industry news listing, Fannie Mae removed its requirement to retain recordings of remote online notarisations in July 2026.
State law is the other layer. The association's digital closings advocacy page says that as of 14 September 2023, 45 states had passed legislation on remote online notarisation, with California the 45th. The page is undated and its content runs to 2023, so the count is given here as it stood on that date and not as today's figure. The same page records that a federal bill, the SECURE Notarization Act, passed the House of Representatives by voice vote on 27 February 2023 and would permit remote online notarisation nationwide. The page does not report that the bill became law.
Related readCan a Singapore property deal be signed and settled electronically?Taken together, the two layers explain why a single lender working across many states still handles paper, electronic and remote closings side by side. A rule that holds for a Fannie Mae loan in one state is not automatically the rule for another investor or another state.
What borrowers and loan officers say
National Mortgage Professional set the deal against a survey published in September, ServiceLink's 2026 Loan Officer Report. Its findings point in two directions.
On the borrower side, 88 per cent of recent homebuyers said the ability to sign some or all of their closing documents electronically would influence which provider they chose. On the loan officer side, the report asked what holds electronic closings back, and the answers were spread across technology and habit.
Source: ServiceLink 2026 Loan Officer Report, September 2026, as reported by National Mortgage Professional on 7 October 2026.
The largest single answer was not about software at all: a preference for traditional processes. The second was limited availability of fully compliant eClosing technology. The survey is one company's own report, and its figures describe what respondents said, not how many closings are in fact electronic. The research gathered for this article contains no official count of that share.
The Stavvy deal is not the only move among closing technology firms this year. National Mortgage Professional notes in the same report that Asurity and NotaryCam expanded their partnership earlier in 2026.
A leadership change at an earnest-money firm
The same day brought a personnel announcement from a neighbouring part of the transaction. Earnest money is the deposit a buyer puts down on a purchase, a separate step from the loan closing. HousingWire reported on Tuesday 6 October that Earnnest, a digital real estate payments company based in Greenville, South Carolina, had named Russell Smith as chief executive.
Related readSigning and stamping Singapore property papers: what can go digitalMr Smith was the company's president and chief operating officer, a post he held for four years after joining in the fall of 2020, according to HousingWire. Rick Altizer, who joined in March 2019 and led the company for seven and a half years, becomes vice chairman of the board. George Clements is co-founder and chairman.
HousingWire also relays the company's own tally of its size: more than 1 million transactions since 2019, totalling more than US$4 billion. That figure is the company's and is not independently checked in the report. The item is recorded here as a change of leadership and nothing more; it says nothing about how any firm's service compares with another's, or with a deposit paid in the traditional way.
The two announcements are unrelated, and they concern different moments of a sale. They share only a date: on 6 October, one firm in this field changed owner and another changed leader.
What is known and what is not
Several things are settled by the sources. A majority interest in Stavvy has been bought. The operations are to be combined with Simply Secure Sign. Stavvy's leadership and staff are moving to Mortgage Connect.
Several others are not. The price is undisclosed. The material published so far gives no date for when the combined platform will be offered to lenders, and no timetable for merging the two products. It does not say whether the Stavvy name will be kept, nor how existing Stavvy customers will be handled during the change, a practical question for the firms that run closings on it today.
For the people at the closing table, nothing in the announcement changes the rules. A notary acting remotely on a loan bound for Fannie Mae must still be licensed and present in the state of the act, the recorder must still accept the document, and the borrower still cannot be made to close remotely. The deal changes who owns the tools. The conditions for using them remain those set by each state and each investor.
Kooky, from Shaka
Kooky edits Agents Estate and builds Shaka, the payment router he made for real estate professionals. One payment comes in, and every agent, agency and party in the deal receives their signed share on closing date.
