Questions buyers ask

Sign in to your account and press the Pay button on your parcel. Payments run through Stripe. We never see or store your card or bank numbers — Stripe holds those, not us.

Paying from a bank account (ACH) keeps the fees down. Cards work too, they just cost more to run. Bank payments can take a few days to finalize, so a payment you make on the due date may still show as clearing for a day or two after.

Autopay debits your bank on the due date each month. Set it once and you never have to think about it again. You can turn it off from the same button you turned it on with — it isn't a condition of anything, it's a convenience.

It takes your full scheduled payment unless you tell it otherwise. Under “Autopay amount” you can pick a fixed amount instead. If that amount is less than the payment, the screen says so before you save it, and your account card keeps saying so afterwards: the rest is still owed, and a late fee can still attach once the grace period ends. Pick more than the payment and the extra goes straight to principal.

Three days before each debit we email you the date and the amount. If a debit bounces, we tell you the same way, we do not try again on our own, and the account card gives you a Retry button — or just use Pay now.

Want to send extra in a given month without changing autopay? Use Pay now and flip the switch to Extra principal. It opens once the account is current.

You have a 10-day grace period from the due date. Inside those ten days nothing is added.

After that a $25 late fee attaches — once for the payment that was missed, not once a month for as long as it stays missed. Three missed payments is three fees; one missed payment is one fee no matter how long it takes to catch up.

If you know a payment is going to be short or late, email us before it happens. We are not interested in collecting fees off you and there is nothing awkward about the conversation. The people who get in trouble are the ones who go quiet.

Because a partial payment lowers your balance but does not clear the missed payment. Your account is current when what you've paid equals what was owed — not before.

The figure at the top of your parcel card is the whole amount it takes to be current, and it comes from one place, so no two screens should ever quote you different numbers. If they do, tell us.

One more thing worth knowing: being inside the grace period is not the same as being current. Grace only decides whether a late fee attaches.

Yes, and there is no penalty for it. None — not on a full payoff, not on an extra $50 you throw at it in March. Pay ahead, pay extra, pay it off tomorrow; the price does not change.

Extra money above your scheduled payment goes straight to principal. It does not push your due date forward — next month's payment is still due next month. It is simply working against a smaller balance now.

Payoff quotes are free and instant, right in your account. Some servicers charge to prepare one and charge again to email it. We don't.

Take a balance of $9,000 at 8%:

Because we don't count real days. Every month is 30 days here, so a 28-day February and a 31-day July cost exactly the same interest. That cuts both ways, and it is the reason your payment is the same number every single month.

It can be, so here is the honest version. There is a convention called Actual/360 that counts the real days you held the money — all 365 of them — and still divides by 360. That collects about five extra days of interest a year, roughly 1.4% more than the rate printed on the front of the note. We do not use it.

Ours is 30/360 on both sides: 12 months × 30 days = 360. The top and the bottom match, so you pay exactly the rate you were quoted. Not a fraction more.

Nothing. Under 30/360 a leap day does not exist, so there is no extra charge and no adjustment to make. Under Actual/365 you would quietly pay for a 366th day at a 365-day rate.

With a per-diem: your rate divided by 360, times your balance. At 8% on $9,000 that is $2.00 a day.

Your payoff is the unpaid principal, plus interest through the day the money actually reaches us, plus any unpaid fees, less any money of yours we are already holding. No unearned interest — we don't charge you for days you didn't have the money.

Please do. Put your balance, your rate and your term into any amortization calculator online. Nearly all of them use 30/360, so the schedule should match ours to the penny. If it doesn't, one of us has it wrong, and that is worth a five-minute email.

Email support@reddirtlandco.com with what you calculated and how you got there. If we made a mistake, the correction appears as its own visible entry in your payment history — we do not quietly edit the past. You will see what changed, when, and why.

One thing always wins: the note you signed. If the paper says something different from this page, the paper governs and we fix the page.

Everything we signed together, plus everything that gets recorded afterward, as we get it back: your purchase agreement, your note and its addendum, your deed, the deed of trust we record as our lien, and — when you're paid off — the release of that deed of trust (the recorded deed of release and reconveyance) that clears our lien from your title. Payment receipts and year-end paperwork land there too.

They appear under Documents on your parcel in the portal. Download any of them any time; they're yours. If something you signed isn't showing up, that's worth an email — recording can take the county a while, but the copy you signed shouldn't be missing.

We do, while your note is current. Red Dirt Land Co pays the county direct and collects for it monthly through your tax reserve, which is part of what you send us each month. You don't get a separate bill from us for it and you don't have to remember a due date.

If the reserve ever runs short, we can pay the county and add what we advanced to your balance rather than let the parcel go delinquent — and you'd see that as its own line, not buried inside a payment.

What the tax means for your own return is a question for your CPA, not for us.

No. We never ran one — we don't pull credit on anyone. The down payment is what we go on.

Start from the assumption that anything urgent about money is fake until you've checked it somewhere other than the message itself. That is not paranoia; land and real-estate payments are a favourite target precisely because the amounts are large and the buyer is usually expecting an email.

Things we will never do, no exceptions:

• Send you new payment instructions, or tell you an account number changed.
• Ask for your card number, your bank login, or a password — by email, text or phone.
• Ask to be paid by wire, gift card, crypto or an app, or charge you a fee to release your deed.
• Pressure you to act today.

If a message asks for any of that, don't reply to it and don't call a number printed in it. Sign in to the portal, or email support@reddirtlandco.com from an address you already had for us. Forwarding us the suspicious message is genuinely useful — it tells us someone is targeting our buyers.

At least 12 characters, including one lowercase letter, one UPPERCASE letter, one number, and one symbol like ! or #. Spaces don't count as symbols.

Passwords that show up in known breach lists are refused, even when they satisfy every rule above. That check isn't us being difficult — a password that has already leaked somewhere else is the single most likely way an account gets taken.

Set or change yours under Your account in the portal.

Under Your account in the portal. Changing it updates your sign-in and the records on your parcel together, so nothing comes unlinked. We send a notice to your old address as well, so a change you didn't make can't happen quietly. Your password stays the same.

Because some things can't be emailed. Recorded paper, year-end paperwork and your deed go to the address on file, and a deed that comes back undeliverable is a genuine headache to sort out later.

Keep your name, phone and mailing address current under Your account. Changes update the records on your parcel automatically.

Use Forgot password on the sign-in screen, or have the portal email you a one-time sign-in link. Those links work once and last about an hour — if you've been sitting on one since yesterday, request a fresh one rather than fighting with it.

After a few failed attempts on the same email we'll ask you to tick a box confirming you're not a robot. That is a speed bump for password guessing, not a sign anything is wrong with your account.

Still stuck? Email support@reddirtlandco.com and we'll sort it out.

Email support@reddirtlandco.com. It reaches us directly — we are a two-person company, so there is no queue. Anything about your account, your payments or your paperwork goes there.

It is a second check at sign-in. Once it is on, the portal asks for your password and a 6-digit code from an authenticator app on your phone. The code changes every 30 seconds and only your phone can produce it.

We require it because a password alone is one leak away from being useless. Passwords get reused, guessed and phished; a code that lives on your phone doesn't travel with them. With two-step on, someone who somehow has your password still can't open your account, see your balance or touch your payment settings.

Every account has it. The first time you sign in, the portal takes you straight to the set-up screen, and your account opens as soon as it's done. It costs nothing and takes about a minute.

You don't have to go looking for it: the first time you sign in, the portal shows the set-up screen before anything else. You'll see a square QR code and, under it, a typed key.

1. Open your authenticator app and choose to add an account. Point the phone's camera at the QR code — or, if you can't scan, type the key in by hand.
2. The app now shows a 6-digit code for Red Dirt Land Co. Type that code into the portal and press Turn it on.

That's it. From the next sign-in on, the portal asks for your password and then for the current code from the app.

From a first-visit sign-in link, you set up two-step first and create your password under Your account afterwards. From a password-reset email, you choose the new password first and the set-up screen follows straight after. Either way there is no skip: until it's done, the only other button on that screen is Sign out.

Any authenticator app that does standard 6-digit codes: Google Authenticator, Microsoft Authenticator, Authy, 1Password, Bitwarden, or the one built into an iPhone's Passwords app. They all work the same way with us; use whichever you already have. If you have none, Google Authenticator or Microsoft Authenticator are free and take a minute to install.

Pick one that backs up or syncs to a second device if you can — see the next question for why.

Email support@reddirtlandco.com from the address on your account. We will confirm it is really you — expect a couple of questions only the account holder can answer — and then remove the old authenticator so you can sign in with your password and set up a new one.

We do this by hand, on purpose. A recovery that a stranger could trigger with a click would undo the point of the second step. We aim to have you back in the same business day, but it is a short wait rather than an instant fix, so if you are changing phones, move the authenticator over before the old phone goes.

A payment coming due while you're locked out? See the next question.

If you have autopay on, nothing changes. Autopay takes your payment on the due date whether or not you can sign in.

If you pay by hand, email support@reddirtlandco.com from the address on your account as soon as you're locked out. We'll confirm it's you and aim to have you signed back in the same business day.

Tell us within your 10-day grace period and, if we can't get you back in before the grace period ends, we'll waive that month's late fee.

If we don't hear from you and the payment goes past the grace period, the late fee applies as it normally would. So tell us early.

We will never email you a payment link, or ask for your card or bank details by email, text or phone, to get around a lockout. Your payments happen only in this portal. If someone offers you another way to pay, it isn't us.

No. Two-step verification is required on every account, so the portal has no switch to turn it off. If you're changing phones, move the authenticator app over before the old phone goes; if you've lost it, email support and we'll remove the old one so you can set up a new one (see above).