Once upon a time in residential real estate, there was just one kind of sale: between an ordinary Seller and a Buyer (usually represented by their Realtors).
Then, after the Wall Street-engineered housing bust, every other deal (literally) involved either a bank owner (foreclosure), or an underwater homeowner who needed bank relief to sell (called a “short sale”).
The latter two situations were lumped together as “lender-mediated sales.”
Which left the question: what do you call a regular (normal) transaction?
Answer: “a traditional sale.” See, “Non-Traditional vs. Regular Sales.”
Cue Electronic Signatures
The advent of now-ubiquitous electronic signatures has raised a similar question.
Namely, what do you call a plain, old ordinary signature? (still perfectly acceptable — and required for recording many real estate-related doc’s with the local county/government authority).
Answering that question requires working your way backwards.
So, apparently one of the synonyms for an electronic signature is a “dry” signature.
Ergo, the opposite of a “dry” signature is . . . a “wet” one.
P.S.: The nomenclature conundrum recalls one of my favorite Mad magazine cartoons, showing a food stand vendor in front of a big sign that reads “Turkey burgers, chicken burgers, veggie burgers, buffalo burgers” ” and on and on.
The caption: “We have some with ham, too, but we don’t know what to call them.”
