Closing Escrow On Your Probate Real Estate
What to Expect
Hi, I’m Kim Ward, real estate broker and expert at helping executors, and administrators with homes in probate.
Today we’re talking about closing escrow on your probate real estate, what to expect. Closing the home is a truly exciting milestone for many executors and administrators, and if you made it to this point… Congratulations! But, we’re not quite done yet, and there’s more things that I’d like to share with you about closing escrow.
Both buyers and sellers, like you, need to know exactly what’s going to happen next, so that you can get to that finish line, safe and on time. Of course, 30 days ago when you accepted that offer you thought, things are mostly done now. If you watch any of my other videos, you know that you still have your inspection; and the buyers appraisal; or request for repairs, many documents; Completing your escrow documents, which is a huge packet that you have received in the mail already; and getting to this point has been a lot of work for you! And some of that work was you had to pack up all of the belongings that you would like to have; you had to then have those belongings addressed in either a buy-out appraisal or donation; you’ve had to get to a bank and use an EIN number to open up a bank account for the estate; and you’ve completed all the disclosures, that I guided you through, to this point to really let the buyer know what to expect, what you knew about the house! You disclose it in writing, and that’s gonna protect you and the estate. We’ve gone through the process of preparing the house for sale together, sometimes there’s cost-effective repairs, almost always, there’s a cleaning fee to just put the house in a clean condition…
I’m in the process of helping Jeff and his family, we just put their house on the market, it’s in a trust, but that’s just sort of like a probate, it’s part of an estate, and we had to hire someone to come in and clean the fixer property. Good news is we put it on the market for $579,000 as of yesterday, we had a dozen showings!
To get back to what to expect next, now, if you’ve completed all of your escrow documents and you’ve shipped them back to escrow. Of course, you had to get some documents notarized, hopefully that was done correctly. You’ll now wait for escrow to tell you whether those documents are completed accurately or if they just need a little bit more information. My escrow company will reach out to you to make sure that the documents are completed as they need them to have your file be complete.
About a week before your close of escrow my team will email you and let you know that it’s now time to schedule the turning off of all the utilities. That means you need to contact San Diego Gas and Electric, whoever is your water company (find your provider here), most likely, you no longer have phone or internet at the property, but if you do, you’ll need to take care of that also.
Now, one really important thing is DO NOT cancel your property insurance until we have officially closed escrow it’s okay if you even wait a few days after the escrow is close to contact your insurance company and let them know that you no longer are responsible for the home. You wanna make sure that the home is protected all the way through the sale and the recording of the deed in the buyer’s name before you can sell that insurance. And one other thing, if there happens to be a trash pick up company, sometimes it’s Waste Management, sometimes it’s EDCO, you’ll need to cancel that also. So, if you’re just getting ready to finish those escrow documents, you’ll know that you need to complete them as accurately as possible, and get them notarized, certain pages must be notarized by a notary that the escrow entitled company approve of.
So, on the buyer side of things, the buyer will have had to complete their escrow documents also. Since the buyer probably is here in San Diego we always recommend that they go into our escrow company and complete the documents. It’s the easiest way to do it, they have a notary there. So, we will be monitoring on your behalf that those documents have been completed by the buyer, they are typically completed three to four days before the close of escrow, that way escrow can package them all up, send them back to the lender. The lender can then do their process, get them approved, send the money over that the lender is lending to the buyer, and that’s what will lead us to that closing.
The other thing the buyer will do is they will either wire or bring in a cashier’s check to escrow in order to cover their part of the expenses; their down payment; any closing costs that they have to pay; things like that. Once all these things are completed then escrow will handle the recording of the deed. The way that works is that on the day of closing, they will send all of the documentation that needs to be recorded to the San Diego County recording office.
We usually wait until the end of the day until we will find out… Keep in mind, the recording office has stacks and stacks of homes that are being recorded. The transfer of the sale is being recorded, and we’re waiting to hear from the county recorder’s office to the title company, who will then tell the escrow company, who will then let me know that we have closed escrow. Once that is complete, I will call you and let you know that the congratulations are truly in order, and it’s time to truly celebrate the closing of your loved one’s home. That’s a bit of an overview of what to expect on the closing day! I hope you found this of value!
