How Long Does It Take To Close On A House?

Karin Carr, REALTOR®
Karin Carr, REALTOR®
Published on August 14, 2017

Insert H1 subheading: Average time to buy a house

Transcript of the video above.
Hey, Karin Carr here from GeorgiaCoastHomes.com I’m a Realtor in Savannah, GA with Keller Williams, and today I am going to answer the question: How long does it take to close on a house? And be sure to stay till the end because I’m going to give you a bonus tip that will save you hours when looking for your next house. So let’s get right to it. The first thing to consider is… Your loan type. Are you getting an FHA loan, a VA loan, a USDA loan, or a conventional loan? Are you putting zero down, or are you putting 20% down?  All of those things factor in to how long it’s going to take to buy your house. The second thing that affects how long it takes is your financial stability. Are you a first-time buyer with very little money in the bank? Perhaps you’re new to the job market, you just graduated college you’ve only been working a year or two, and don’t have a really long job history behind you. Or is this the 10th house you’ve bought and sold in your lifetime and you’ve got lots and lots of money in the bank. The less money you have the more carefully the loan officer and the lending team is going to look at your file because they want to make sure that you have the ability to repay the loan. They would rather deny you now and say “I’m sorry, you’re not qualified,” than agree to the home loan and then a year from now the bank is foreclosing on you because you just didn’t have the ability to repay the loan. So they’re going to look at your financials very closely. The third thing that will affect it is what do both parties want? Let’s say that the seller puts their house on the market in.. early March, and they say “We want to remain in the house until the end of May when the end of the school year is because we don’t want our children to have to change schools three weeks prior to the end of the school year.” Or perhaps the buyer says “My lease is not up for 90 days. I’d like to close in 2 1/2 months and then that will give me 2 weeks to move out of my apartment and get it all cleaned before my lease is up. So it’s really whatever both parties agree to. The fourth thing that will affect how long it takes is your lender. What is your lender’s average turnaround time? There are lots of lenders where I’ll be saying, “I need an update. What’s going on with this file? My client wants to make sure we’re going to close on time.” And you hear… crickets. And obviously I never ever work with those people again. I want to work with a lender who’s going to get back to me, you know, within an
hour or two and say, “Here’s where we are on the file, this is what’s going on, yes, we’re closing on time. This is what I’ve asked the borrower for. I’m waiting for them to send me their last two bank statements.” Etc… So as long as your lender is on the ball and they can turn around things as quickly as they need to
then everything is going well. So, the rough estimate for how long does it take to close on a house?
It could be two weeks if you’re paying cash, the average is probably 30 days, on the outside, it could be 60 days, rarely will it go longer than 60 days unless one of the parties has specifically requested that it takes longer than two months. And now for that bonus tip! The longest part of closing on a house is… finding the house. So, most buyers will decide, “Ok, I want… I want a 4 bedroom and I want it to be in this school district and I want it to have a 2 car garage and a big back yard, preferably with a fence,” and they have this whole wish list of things that they want for their home. Their Realtor will send them lists of properties and they’ll say, “Oh, this one looks good, this one looks good, cross this one off the list. This one looks good.” And on Saturday they’ll go out and see 6, 7, 8 houses They spend a lot of time driving around, a lot of gas money going to look at these houses only to find out that none of them worked. Or, of the 8 that you looked at, 7 of them are going to be crossed off the list. Well, what about virtual reality for house hunting? What if your agent went over and took a 360-degree video, you had a pair of virtual reality goggles. You put your phone in here, close it, pull up the tour, and watch it through these VR goggles. It literally feels like you are standing in that living room. You can turn all the way in a circle. You can look down at the floor, look up at the ceilings, you can be outside and look all the way around, look up and down that street. It will tell you what that property is truly like. And you can either say, “No, I don’t think this is gonna work for us,” or “YES! Let’s make an appointment to go see it.” So if YOU are house hunting in the Savannah area and you’d like to see a demo of how this works, go to VirtualHomeTour360.com for a little introduction to how this is going to work for my clients. And let me know if you want to talk further about it. Now you know, how long it takes to buy a house. Thank you so much for watching! And I will see you in the next video.

Check out the bonus tip mentioned in the video here: www.VirtualHomeTour360.com

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I’m a full-time Realtor® in Rincon, Georgia. I love working with military clients since I’m an Air Force wife myself. I’ve got two great kids and a 150 lb. English Mastiff who slobbers more than Beethoven.

❤ New videos on YouTube every MONDAY ❤   http://bit.ly/2tda0df

Here are some other videos you might like:

How to Buy Your First Home EVER: https://youtu.be/h9Rq1heeKN8 How to Increase Your Zestimate: https://youtu.be/Hp36fNukdME Why It’s Important to Choose the Right Realtor: https://youtu.be/Cl2dN6rA12w Buying Your First Home: https://youtu.be/xGE4a9IMZwM Buying a New Home From the Builder: https://youtu.be/AaJ0Oa3PAaI

Learn more about Savannah real estate and the general home buying and selling processes:

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I am so grateful for all your subscribers, both clients and Realtors, so thanks for watching my goofy videos!

I serve buyers and sellers in the Savannah area, including Rincon, Pooler, Guyton, Richmond Hill, and Savannah itself.

If you want to talk to me about Savannah real estate feel free to email me at [email protected].

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