When Can I Move In?

Don't pack your bags to move into the home you are buying until you know for sure the closing is happening when you expect. That date is likely to be later than you thought when you wrote the purchase agreement.

Unless you and the seller agree otherwise, you shouldn't expect to get possession until the day the transaction hits the state recorder's office. That's not the day you go to the bank or title company to sign the closing documents and write that huge check. If there is a weekend or some kind of state holiday you might not get the keys for days after you thought you should.

Let's start at the end, when you get the keys, and see what has to happen first.

Most mortgage companies won't clear a file for recording without reviewing what you signed first. If the people who approve the file are out of state you are going to have to sign the documents in the morning if you want to record on the next business day.

This mortgage company might generate its documents out of state also. It may take them two or three working days to do that and get them to Alaska. When the documents get here the mortgage company has to pull the file together and send it to the title company where you go to sign. The title company has to prepare the settlement statement and be sure they have resolved any issues on the preliminary title report.

If all this is going on at the end of the month when the most closings tend to occur you may discover that it's going to take a day or two for the title company to get you on their schedule. Just getting documents prepared, delivered to Alaska, over to the title company, scheduling, signing and recording takes about five working days.

Count on somebody dropping the ball. This is when you hear there's a lien the builder has to clear off the house, or a survey that didn't get ordered, or a loan payoff that has not arrived.

What's frustrating to the consumer is that nobody prepares you for these eventualities. Everybody sees his or her part of the process and tends to promise more, in an attempt to be accommodating, than is really practical.

Your loan officer is an example. Throughout the process you and the loan processing staff have focussed on what it takes to get the loan approved. Finally they ask you to come in and sign the typed loan application, the last thing you do before the file goes to the underwriter. It's natural to assume you are close to closing now. The loan processors think this way, too. After all, they've finished their part of the job, unless the underwriter doesn't like something about the file.

Of course underwriters always don't like something about the file. Maybe your loan got approved, but there's conditions. Pesky items like the copy of your great aunt's last bank reconciliation that for reasons nobody understands now is suddenly vital. By the time you get all this done another week drifts by.

Have you been counting? You heard your file is complete: "Come sign the application to submit to underwriting because we ought to be closing soon." Three days in underwriting. Two days to find the stuff they want. Another day to clear the condition. Three days to get documents in. Two days to get on the title company's calendar. Sign in the afternoon, which turns out to be a Friday before a holiday weekend.

If that weekend was President's Day, March 21, and you got the keys March 22 this means you went in to the sign the loan application "because we ought to be closing soon" on March 3. After all, there's only five working days in most weeks.

Before the bank loan officers write in, let's admit they do better than the mortgage companies at this stage of the loan processing cycle. They close their own loans and generate documents locally. With everything in-house they often can telescope this three weeks down to a third of that.

There are a few things you and your real estate agent can do. Stay on the top of your file. Be a squeaking wheel. Ask pointed questions about what is supposed to be happening now and tomorrow. Ask what you can do to help move things along. Ask what the other players are supposed to be doing. Be prepared to do some running around for the other person if it's important to you to stay on schedule.

Clear communications and planning will make a big difference about how you end up feeling about the process. If your heart is set on moving in over a particular three-day weekend, you are going to be very unhappy if it turns out that you won't get the keys until the Tuesday after. Sit down with a calendar and be realistic about how long it takes to get things done. Keep your sense of humor and be pleasantly surprised at the end.