Congratulations, you’re now officially under contract! This is an exciting time, but remember that we still have work to have a good contract closing.
In this article, I’ll be showing you five important steps we’ll have to undertake to close your deal successfully. Watch the full YouTube video here:
Prepare a Transaction Timeline
We’ll try to get this out to you as soon as possible within a day. It’s going to have all of the important deadlines from the contract. Time is of the essence, and it’s important that we meet all of these deadlines.
Furthermore, we will be monitoring and babysitting all of the buyer’s deadlines on the front end, ensuring that they pay their earnest money deposit, apply to the homeowner’s association, or to their lender for any of the obligations that they have on your individual contract.
Inspections
Next, we’re moving into the due diligence and home inspection period. Your buyer will schedule their home inspections and notify us when it’s going to be. It is customary for a seller to leave their home during a home inspection. However, if you feel strongly that you need to be there or you need your real estate agent to be there for a particular reason, we will discuss that. But most typically you’ll have to leave for the home inspection.
The buyer or their agent together with the inspector will all come in for a 2 to 3-hour period of time and do the home inspection. Usually, they’ll get the results of the inspection by that night or the next day, and we’ll hear from them within a couple of days.
Suppose there’s anything concerning to them, depending on whether they’re financing or not. In that case, we will then have either or both appraisal and survey and perhaps even the buyer coming back for some revisits. It can be a case that they’d like to show some family members, or they need to measure for furniture and have some vendors come in.
Title Work
After we get through both preparing timelines and inspections, we will be providing them with proof of title insurance. So you’re going to be hearing from the title company along the way. They’ll email you upfront and ask you to fill out an information sheet with your confidential information.
Your title company will provide the title insurance coverage as we approach closer to contract closing, generally 15 days before. So, if anything has to be fixed before issuing a clear title, you’ll hear about it from them as well.
Additionally, you do not have to be physically present in Florida to complete the transaction. Depending on the circumstances, you can do it online or via video chat. You may have a mobile notary come to you, or you can have your documents overnighted to you and then take them to a notary to be signed. We make things extremely simple for you. If you like the conventional closing, we’ll go to the title company, sign everything, and go through every last detail of the contract.
Utility Transfers
As we get very close to closing the contract, we’ll need to make preparations in order to transfer all of your services. We’re talking about utilities like water, electricity, smart technologies, and anything that’s transferable to the buyer that is in your home.
For anything that you’ve got a contract with, you have to start thinking about that final payment, notifying them that you’re moving and doing all those preparations. Please be reminded that you should not turn off your utilities prior to closing. The contract says that in order to close, we must have utilities on. So it’s much better to just wait until the day of closing to turn off your utilities.
Final walkthrough.
The final walkthrough either happens the day before closing or the day of closing, depending on both the buyer’s and seller’s schedule. Typically, buyers will go directly from the final walkthrough to the title company to close the deal and take possession of the property.
So if we have anything in our contract that’s different from what we learned today, we’ll discuss that. But generally, this is the flow of the transaction.
If you have any questions whatsoever, especially as you’re getting ready to close a contract, ask your professional Realtor® or contact us.