From contract to keys: what happens, week by week

The day the contract is signed

Three clocks start at once. Your escrow deposit is due to the title company within a few days, so have the money ready to move. The inspection period begins, and with it the window to ask for repairs or credits. And your loan officer needs the signed contract right away, because the loan cannot move forward without it.

This is also the moment to decide about locking your rate, if you have not already. Ask your loan officer how long the lock runs against your closing date, so the two line up without paying for time you do not need.

The first week: the file opens, the house gets inspected

Your loan officer issues the official disclosures and asks for whatever documents are still missing. Answer fast. Every day a request sits in your inbox is a day that comes off the end of the schedule.

Meanwhile your agent arranges the inspection. In Florida there are usually two extra reports worth having at the same visit: a four-point inspection, which insurers ask for on older homes, and a wind mitigation report, which can lower what you pay for homeowners insurance. Book them together and you save a trip and a fee.

The lender orders the appraisal in this stretch too. You do not schedule it and you are not in the room; the listing agent arranges access.

The middle weeks: underwriting, appraisal, title, insurance

This is the quiet stretch where most of the work happens. The underwriter reads your file and issues conditions, the list of things still needed before the loan can be cleared. The appraisal comes back. The title company searches the property’s history and runs a lien search, which in Miami-Dade and Broward often turns up open permits, old work the city never signed off on, that the seller has to close before the sale can.

Homeowners insurance is the item Florida buyers most often leave late, and it is the one that most often moves a closing. Coverage can take time to find and bind, especially for older roofs, waterfront homes or properties in a flood zone. Start shopping the week you go under contract, not the week before closing. If you are buying a condo, the lender will also review the building, which depends on the association answering a questionnaire.

Clear to close, the disclosure and the wire

When the last condition is signed off, the file is clear to close. The lender then sends your Closing Disclosure, the final version of every cost, which by law has to reach you at least three business days before you sign. Read it against your Loan Estimate and ask about anything that moved.

You will also be told how much to bring to closing, usually by wire. This is where buyers get robbed. Criminals send emails that look exactly like the title company’s, with new wiring instructions. Before you send a single dollar, call the title company at a number you already had, not one from the email, and confirm the instructions out loud. No real title company changes its wiring details by email at the last minute.

The final walkthrough happens in the day or two before closing: you confirm the house is in the condition the contract promised and that agreed repairs were done.

Closing day, and what can still go wrong

In Florida you sign at the title company or with a closing agent. The lender funds the loan, the deed is recorded, and the keys are yours. On most purchases this all happens the same day.

What moves a closing at the last minute is almost always one of a short list: a new loan or credit card opened during the process, a change of job, a large deposit nobody can explain, insurance that was not bound in time, or an open permit that surfaced late. Every one of them is avoidable. Until you have the keys, keep your financial life exactly as it was the day you applied, and if something has to change, call your loan officer before it does, not after.