Real estate transactions have come a long way from the days where parties gathered in a conference room on the closing day and executed documents live and in person, but one thing has not changed—any document which is intended to be recorded (including mortgages and various other security documents) needs to be notarized. Until recently in most jurisdictions that meant the signer and notary had to be physically present together, but a recent statutory change in New York permitting Remote Online Notarization (RON) will now allow the parties to be in separate states, or even countries.