Since we've had so many questions on closing lately, I thought I'd give my "review".
We bought a house. Holy crap.
Our walk through was scheduled for 9:30 this morning. We showed up and the sellers were still moving out so we saw what we could but then waited for them to get everything out to look things over. They were very nice and labeled all of the keys to things, gave us the manuals for stuff they were leaving and were just generally friendly people. We exchanged emails in case any important mail arrived that needed to be passed on.
I had reviewed our HUD settlement sheet in advance. I HIGHLY recommend looking it over thoroughly. I figured out that they were including the appraisal and credit check in our money due at closing and we had already paid it, so it was a $455 catch.
We got to the actual closing and it was a big conference table with us on one side and them on the other. We were done in about 45 minutes. There was not as much to sign as I expected - it was a lot, but I think it was about the same as the mortgage application.
After everything was signed, we sat around waiting for word from the mortgage company and then poof, we had a house!
I have to say, I've had the "holy crap, are we doing the right thing?" moment every day since we stared this whole thing. When we were at the house this afternoon (removing wallpaper) I finally felt like "yeah, this was the right thing". It's still scary, but I really love our house.
Re: Rundown of closing experience (for anyone interested)
That is great that it worked out so well for you guys.
After we bought our house I never really felt like it was ours until last night when the doorbell rang and it was the girl scouts selling cookies!
It was a weird feeling to finally realize that the house was ours.
Thanks everyone! I was definitely waiting for something crazy to come up so it was a relief (and a surprise) to get through everything so smoothly.
Thanks for the refresher. It's funny how much I have forgotten about the process (we bought our current house over 9 years ago).
And good call about checking the paperwork for stuff that was already paid, I'm going to double check ours, too.
Thanks, we close a week from tomorrow!
good luck to all of us
Thank you for posting your experience. It's great to know that it really can be that easy!
Best of luck on the all remodeling and wall paper removal.
Our house building adventure (UPDATED 8/20/12)
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Thanks so much for posting this! It's great to have a general idea of what goes on...
Best of luck in your new home!