When Will My Home in Sacramento Close Escrow?

Sellers don’t take kindly to the correct answer when they ask: when will my home in Sacramento close escrow. The correct answer is, of course, when fairies sprinkle pixie dust. If a buyer is lucky enough to be working with one of our preferred mortgage lenders, I can accurately predict a closing date for my sellers, but if it’s some other lender, an exact closing date is difficult to nail.

Oh, sure, there is a closing date specified in the purchase contract on page 1 near the top. It will either indicate an exact date, such as April 30th, or it will give an approximate number of days (usually 30) from the date of the contract to close. The date of the contract is the date the agent (or buyer) received the executed contract, which is usually the date the last buyer signed, not the date the purchase contract was drawn. However, to many mortgage lenders in Sacramento, those closing times are simply estimates and mean little.

If the closing date expires, the mortgage lender will simply expect all parties to extend the purchase contract. That’s because mortgage lenders might not give a crap about whether the loan blows up because the seller refuses to extend. They work in some other financial arena, worlds apart from Sacramento real estate. It happens. Sellers are not obligated to extend the purchase contract upon expiration. Buyers might cry foul under those circumstances but what happens if a seller could sell to another buyer for more?

Big name banks, and you all know who they are, are the most guilty of not closing on time, but so are the itty bitty real estate companies that try to wear two hats and be a mortgage broker plus a real estate agent to some poor fool. The first is because they’re too big to care and often employ salaried employees who don’t give a hoot either. The second is because they’re generally inexperienced and too small to carry any weight.

The fact is we real estate agents can push and shove or be as sweet as sugar all we want to manage escrow closings, but until the underwriter releases the file from underwriting and sends docs to title, we don’t really know for certain when we will close. Once we get the docs, then we can target the date. This is why it’s so important to work with a mortgage lender who can guarantee a closing date. These lenders do exist.