At this point in our journey to your new home, hopefully you have resolved any home inspection issues that you have and your financing is in process.
There are many pieces to the home financing puzzle that you will not see and some that you will. Financing has gotten quite tight now and you will need to be prepared for a high level of documentation required by the lender. They may ask you to document sources of deposits. They may ask you to document other expenses you are responsible for. They may need copies of letters of employment or bonus guarantee letters. Be prepared to respond quickly to any and all requests. While you are addressing these requests, the lender will order an appraisal to confirm value of the home. There is a range of reasonable in which a home may sell – the lender is simply trying to make sure that you are in that range.
Once your loan is approved you begin the long wait until closing. If you had a particularly delayed closing, you will begin to wonder if you are supposed to be doing something else. The next steps happen right before closing. You will set up your insurance coverage on the home with your insurance agent a few weeks in advance. Coverage options vary widely so you will want to work with an insurance agent who will thoroughly review all of your options with you. About a week before, you will need to call the utility companies to move the utility bills to your name. If you forget to do this, the utilities will simply be turned off and it will cost you more to get them turned back on again. For water and sewer, you will need to show up in person to get them connected, so be sure to schedule that in to your work schedule. Finally, the day before closing you will do your walk through to make sure the home is as you expected it would be. If the seller accidentally removed something you thought was to remain or forgot to make a requested repair, now is the time to raise those issues. Once you close, so does your window of opportunity to resolve any last minute concerns with the seller.
On the day of the closing, you will spend about an hour signing many documents and presenting a cashier’s check for any balance you owe above and beyond the mortgage. Once that is completed, you will receive the keys and may begin the happy process of unpacking into your new home!