closing and moving in - can we do both on same day?

[Peacock]

we're staying at a friend's place after selling our house last week. they are on a contract out of town so we have the house to ourselves and can stay as long as we need, but it's not ideal.

we close on our new house in a couple of weeks. If I book the closing for 9:00, can I realistically have us moving in by noon or so? Or should we close one day and move the next? How do people plan these things? And how long do closings usually take these days? Our selling took all day, but I understand the buyers' lender didn't have the paperwork in order and we think ours will, although I guess you never know.

please help me plan. Thanks.

[auntie]

That's how it's often done. Especially if you have professional movers.

Closings can be all over the place- the first one DH did right before we got married took hours. We did a refi and added me to the deed/mortgage a few months later and it took the same time.

The house we're in now took an hour- we bought from my parents, so there were parts skipped like transfer taxes. When we sold our last house to the county, it took 30 minutes.

[nomad100]

Well, we closed on the sale of our house in IL on one day and then headed out in the U-Haul to MI and closed the next morning. We were moving stuff into the garage and rooms with hardwood floors (the carpeted parts of the house were disgusting) that afternoon.

If we had been doing a local move, we likely would have planned to clean on the day of possession and move in the next since stuff can take longer than you might think and people can leave their homes disgusting.

[pooh8402]

We closed on our current home in the morning, it took about an hour, hour and a half to sign papers. The seller had already signed the day before and our realtor has her shit together. We had the movers at our apartment by noon, then we all went to our storage unit, and most everything moved in by 5. It was an in town move, so we doesn't worry about getting everything, but we were like 80% moved in on closing day.

[moolarkey]

We have done that every time. We have our vehicles loaded with cleaning supplies and must-haves. Typically we've closed at 8:30 or 9 AM, out an hour later and on our way.

This last house, the closing was really jacked because of idiot seller realtors. So we didn't close until about 5:30 or 6 PM clear across Columbus on a Friday- closed in an eastside suburb and we are in a suburb on the NW corner of Columbus.

It depends on what your contract calls for too. If you get immediate possession you can start moving immediately. We have always had immediate possession, get the keys at closing -except this last house. Seller's agent was in Florida, agency couldn't find keys. We took paperwork, went to house, called a locksmith. He saw our papers, re-keyed the whole house. Gave us the brand new fancy lockbox from the realtor. I left a phone message for the seller's realtor that told him he could have his lockbox back if he reimbursed us for re-keying the whole house. We never heard from him, it's heavy - it makes a great door stop.

[AAM2012]

May 26, 2015 20:24:33 GMT -5 @beachbella said:

Depends on the state your in and the type of closings you have. In California, for instance, it can take days (I'm on day 4 now) to get keys depending on when the loan gets funded, recorded, and then the recording communicated back. It is awful here.

Same here in Arizona. Also, even though we had 60 days to close there was still a delay that we didn't find out about until the morning we were set to get keys.

[devonpow]

Both of our closings have taken about 2-3 hours including walk through. This last time we had our closing delayed a few hours the day of due to something with the sellers. So we thought we would do the walk through starting at 9 and be done with everything by 12 but the all through was rescheduled for 11:30 and we were done by 2.

Also if it makes it easier you don't both need to be there . You can sign over limited power of attorney to your spouse our attorney for the closing. I've had a few friends who have done this due to various issues. If you do this and only have one person physically at the closing it can ease things up a bit for you.

[mrs.jacinthe]

In Ohio, we could have done that - we closed and were literally handed the keys across the table from the seller.

Here in California, we closed by ourselves (no sellers present - I guess they scheduled their own time) and then we had something like a week before the loan was funded and everything was kosher. We again got the keys direct from the seller, but it was because we were coming in to take measurements as they were literally moving their stuff out. It was so weird, given how smooth the Ohio close was.

[magdala]

We are doing a simultaneous close...where we are closing on the sale of our house and closing on the purchase of our new house in the same day. We are packing everything up on Wednesday and moving it all into the truck except for the master bed, the baby's crib, the overnight bag and the diaper bag. We will be sleeping there Wednesday night. On Thursday morning, we move the last of it into the truck and close on both houses. It will be a wild ride. Closings here generally take hours because someone at one of the banks will screw something up.

[redredwine]

I must be the odd man out because I"m be way too nervous to schedule both on the same day. Honestly, we weren't sure even 24 hours before hand if we were for sure closing on the date we agreed upon due to several last minutes hiccups by various parties (mostly the Title company!)

And once I had keys in hand, I want to clean the entire house so it was clean once movers moved stuff in. We scheduled the movers a few days later.

[qubit]

I'm in Texas too. We planned to do this, but the seller showed up to the closing without his wife. Apparently no one told him that she needed to sign the papers too. They didn't end up signing until the next afternoon, and we didn't get the keys until that time. I spent that evening cleaning and we moved in the next day.

[downtoearth]

We did that with our first house. With our second house, we closed and then went straight there and pulled up all the carpet off the hardwoods. The past owners drove by to give us an extra key and got to see progress by around 4pm.  However, we had a walkthrough that morning and closing was delayed b/c some of the electrical work wasn't done yet and was just finishing that morning, so having a backup plan might be nice.