1. You have accepted an offer. CONGRATULATIONS!
2. The buyers will be depositing their earnest money at escrow.
3. The buyer’s agent will be scheduling inspections. The buyers can have any inspections they choose from a whole home inspection, pest/ dry rot inspection, roof inspection or anything else that might concern them. Typically, an inspection will take about 3 hours and the buyers may be present at the end of the inspection appointment to do a walk through with the inspector. It is best that you are not present to be able to give the buyers the opportunity to speak freely with their inspector and agent.
4. Upon the acceptance of the offer, we have provided the buyers with your Seller’s Property Disclosures.
5. After the buyers’ inspections, they will have an opportunity to ask for you to make repairs or to cancel the transaction based on unconditional disapproval. Typically, an inspection period is 10 business days.
6. Once you have successfully negotiated through repairs, the next step will be for the buyer lender to order an appraisal on the home. This will typically take about 14 days to complete. Cash buyers do not have to have an appraisal, but all buyers obtaining a loan will be required by their lender to have one. Some lenders will waive appraisals if there is a large down payment.
7. You will receive a Title Commitment for Title Insurance. All these forms will come from the title company. You will want to read all these documents carefully to make sure that the information looks correct. You will also receive another set of forms from the title company that you will need to fill out and return. These will allow the Title company to request the payoff from your lender. In the State of Oregon, the seller provides the buyer with a Title Insurance Policy and the Buyer provides the policy for their lender. If you have any questions about these forms, it’s best to call the escrow officer directly and ask them.
8. Once the appraisal is received by the buyer’s lender, their loan paperwork will go to the underwriting department. This is when things quiet down for a bit.
9. Once the buyers have full loan approval their file will move to the closing department where the contracts are put together.
10. Once all the documents are prepared, they will be sent to the escrow company for review and preparations. We should receive the estimated closing statement at this time for your review. This will show the final balance due to you at closing.
11. The escrow company will now prepare the file for signing. Escrow will reach out to you to schedule your signing either in person or by remote signing with a mobile notary.
12. Once the singing is done by both parties, all paperwork will go back to the buyer’s lender for final review. Once reviewed the buyer’s lender will wire their portion of the purchase to the title company. SIGNING AND CLOSING ARE NOT THE SAME AND, IN MOST CASES, WILL NOT OCCUR ON THE SAME DAY.
13. ONCE ALL PARTIES HAVE SIGNED AND ALL FUNDS ARE RECEIVED YOUR SALE WILL CLOSE. YOUR FUNDS WILL TYPICALLY BE DISBURSED BY THE END OF THE DAY! CHECKS AND WIRES WILL BE AVAILABLE THE NEXT BUSINESS DAY AFTER CLOSING.