Now, once your offer has been accepted, it’s time to open up . The escrow company is a neutral third party who facilitates the process and holds the money and documents as it pertains to the sale. They work with the title company to make sure the property has a clear title, meaning there are not any outstanding liens on the home and also that the home is actually owned by the seller and can be sold to you.
After escrow is opened, you need to get your earnest money deposited into escrow within 3 days.
After that, depending on whether you still have your inspection contingency in place, it would be time to get inspections done on the home. Typically I recommend you order professional termite, roof and home inspections. Depending on the property, there may be other inspections that need to be done and I’d advise you on that. We would then review and discuss the reports along with the disclosures from the seller, and decide if we want to request that any items in the home be repaired, or if it’s better to just request a credit for those repairs from the seller, or move forward without requesting anything. Once this has been settled, we lift the inspection contingency by the deadline given in the contract.
If you waived this, you would have done all this work upfront.
Simultaneously, you would be working on securing the loan for your property-to-be, and get the appraisal done. It’s a SUPER exciting time but we need to make sure that we are on top of everything so that we don’t miss any of our contractual timelines. If you’re securing a loan on the property, it’s imperative that you are in regular communication with your lender so we can secure your financing. Regarding the appraisal, the goal is for it to come in at the value that we are in contract for. If it doesn’t, depending on what we’ve negotiated in the contract, we may need to go back and renegotiate around the price. Your lender will schedule this and get it going. Once the appraisal activities are completed and settled, we can lift the appraisal contingency.
Once you know the home has appraised for what you are in contract for and you loan is secure, as determined by your lender, you’ll get your final loan approval. We will then be able to lift the loan contingency, and reach the magical point of “All Contingencies Removed”. Loan documents can be ordered and you’re on your way to home ownership!
There are lots of things that happen once our offer gets accepted and this is the basic timeline. Give me a call or use the form below, I’m Tanja Odzak, East Bay Realtor, and let my team help you make the process as easy as possible.
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I’m a Top Producing Realtor® in the OAKLAND / BERKELEY / EAST BAY AREA. I’ve been in the San Francisco East Bay Area since I came up to do my undergrad at UC Berkeley (a long time ago!), with a short stint at UC Davis while getting my Master’s. I take my duties as a Realtor® and Fiduciary very seriously, I enjoy educating my sellers and buyers along the way. Putting People, Before Profit.
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