Closing Escrow

I wrote a post a few weeks ago about Escrow. We made an offer on a house, which was accepted, and we officially “entered escrow” a little over a month ago. As I mentioned in the previous post, we had a title company (Fidelity) manage our escrow. Well, now we have officially “closed escrow,” and I want to wrap up on the last few pieces of the process since the last post.

Since then, we completed all of our inspections (home, pest, electrical) on the home and finalized negotiations with the seller. Since there were repairs needed and some outdated appliances, we felt that it was fair to ask for a concession on the price. There are three standard ways you can negotiate this: 1) ask for the seller to make repairs, 2) ask for a credit towards closing costs, or 3) ask for a list price reduction. We ultimately asked for money towards closing costs and a list price reduction. We didn’t feel that there was enough time to address the repairs while in escrow and decided to make things as easy and clean as possible by going this route. The seller countered our request, and we landed somewhere in the middle.

The seller’s willingness to negotiate helped me move forward with the deal, even though we didn’t get everything we asked for. It felt to me that they were coming to the table in good faith. A seller’s willingness to negotiate has everything to do with the state of the housing market at the time of sale. If it’s competitive, the seller may decide they don’t want to negotiate and instead put the house back on the market in hopes of another offer (however, they would then run the risk of the next buyer also asking for similar concessions).

In competitive markets, a buyer may present an offer that removes all contingencies (see first escrow post for contingency definition) in hopes to be more attractive to the seller. Luckily for us, the housing market right now is somewhat of a buyer’s market. There was one other offer on the house, but we were lucky enough to have ours accepted. And we were able to have all the standard contingencies and a 30-day escrow period. This definitely gave me more confidence that we would have ample time to complete our due diligence and ensure this was the right house for us.

After we completed our negotiations with the seller we moved forward to the final steps. All of the paperwork was finalized, and the loan amount was adjusted. I went to the title company and signed all of the documents, and the seller had to do the same. I wired my down-payment and the lender sent their portion so that the seller would receive their money. Once all of these transactions were completed, the title company filed the deed with the county recorder, and we were officially made owners of the property! We closed escrow and received the keys to the property.

I have to say, this process was very emotional. So many moments of excitement, waiting, reality checks, and questioning. The day we got the keys we were so excited, and then the reality hit that we now have this huge responsibility. That hit a little heavier than I thought. But it’s been less than a week since we closed, and I am feeling more and more excited every day. We’ve starting making it our own already, and we have many plans for upgrading the space. Come watch the progress over on my Tiktok account!