Fellow Escrow Humans, HAPPY HOLIDAYS! The end of the year is near, time for final reflections about 2019 and ramping up your plans for 2020. I am almost done with both my 2020 and my new decade planning, and I am looking forward to the New Year! I do want to take a moment to say a heartfelt THANK YOU to all of you for your support this year. I so appreciate being part of this escrow tribe. Our November Installation meeting was another fun night, and Lisa Tyler, who was the installation officer and speaker for the evening, entertained us with her informative stories about a variety of scary escrow tales. It’s great to hear these “war stories,” to then be able to recognize red flags on our own desks before they cause real problems. Those of you in attendance would have noticed that the party favors included reference to 2020 being OCEA’s 70th year of existence. That is a milestone worth celebrating! ‘More to come on that next year. THANK YOU to our November meeting sponsors - Margie Coenraad-Martinez of Bank of Hope, Hiba Exeter of Exeter Exchange and Kacy Troncale of SMS. We so appreciate your support! THANK YOU, too, for the generous donations of gifts from - Bank of Hope, BBS Notary, Mechanics Bank, My NHD, RBJ and SMS. Your OCEA Board of Directors had its annual planning meeting on Saturday December 7th - you may have seen our Facebook posts about that. One of our initiatives for next year is updating our website and being more visible on social media. So, with that said: Please like us on Facebook! We have finalized the schedule for our 2020 General Membership Meetings. Please mark your calendars, and plan to join us:
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I do want to highlight our January 14th meeting, which anyone in escrow should attend to learn more about the new 593 Form from the California Franchise Tax Board! It’s a major change which will require reporting to the FTB on every closed sale - whether or not withholding is required. Are your procedures in place? We expect this event to sell out, so be sure make your reservation early - you can’t afford to miss out!
Watch your email for our meeting notices and reservation information -- and bring a colleague or client with you! We look forward to seeing you then! As always, if you have any suggestions or topics that you are interested in hearing about, please let us know!
If you haven’t already done so, please “like” us on FaceBook, and visit the OCEA website where, among other useful bits of information, there’s a list of all of our 2019 Silver Sponsors. All sponsor logos link to their websites.
I thank you for the opportunity to represent you as OCEA’s 2019 President and look forward to serving you again in 2020!
Sincerely,
Mickey Vandenberg
2019 OCEA President
A special thank you to all of our sponsors for 2019, we could not do this without you!
