What actually happens between accepted offer and keys

The question I get most from sellers is not about price. It is some version of “so what actually happens now?”, asked the week after an offer is accepted, usually by someone who has been told it takes about thirty days and has no idea what fills them.

Here is what fills them, in the order it happens.

Week one: the money starts moving and the clock starts running

Escrow opens. The buyer wires their deposit, usually within three business days of acceptance, and it sits with a neutral third party until closing. That deposit is the first real signal you get about how serious the buyer is, and the first thing I check is that it actually arrived on time. A buyer who is slow with the deposit is often slow with everything else.

At the same time the contingency periods start counting. These are the windows the buyer has to inspect the property, get the appraisal back and secure the loan, and until they expire the buyer can walk and keep their deposit. Every one of those days is a day your house is off the market with no guarantee.

This is the part of the process where the work I do before listing pays for itself. If the disclosure package and the pre-listing inspection are already done, the buyer is not discovering the house during this window. They are confirming what they already read before they wrote the offer.

Week two: inspections, and the first real negotiation

The buyer sends their own inspectors through. Even with a pre-listing inspection in hand, most buyers do this, and they should. What changes is the conversation afterwards.

When a buyer finds something the seller did not disclose, two things happen at once: they ask for a credit, and they start wondering what else they have not been told. The second one costs more than the first. It is the reason I would rather hand a buyer a thick disclosure package up front and price the house honestly than save the inspection fee and spend it back in week two.

If a request for repairs comes in, I go through it with you line by line: what is a real defect, what is a wish list item, and what it would cost to fix versus credit. You decide. I will tell you what I think, and I will also tell you when I think the buyer is testing you.

Week two to three: the appraisal

The lender sends an appraiser to confirm the house is worth what the buyer agreed to pay. If it appraises at or above the price, this step passes quietly and you may never hear about it.

If it comes in low, the buyer has a gap between what the bank will lend and what they agreed to pay, and somebody has to cover it. That is a negotiation, and it is a negotiation you are in a much better position for when the file supporting your price is strong: recent closed comparables, a clean inspection, a house that shows the way the photographs promised.

This is also where the pricing conversation we had before listing comes back. A price I can defend with closed comps is a price an appraiser can usually reach. A number chosen to win the listing is not.

Week three to four: loan approval, and the one that actually ends deals

The buyer's file goes through underwriting. This is the step I watch most closely, because I spent twenty years on that side of the desk before I sold a house, and it is the step most likely to fall apart late.

Underwriting is where a lender stops taking the borrower's word for things and starts verifying them. Employment gets re-checked. Bank statements get read again. Any large deposit that appeared recently has to be explained. A buyer who changed jobs, opened a credit card or bought a car between acceptance and closing can turn an approved loan into a declined one.

When the loan contingency is removed, the deal is substantially safer than it was the day before. Until then it is not, no matter how confident everyone sounds.

The last few days: sign, fund, record

You sign your closing documents with a notary, usually a few days before the closing date. The buyer signs theirs. The lender reviews the signed package and wires the loan funds to escrow.

Then the deed records with the county. That is the moment ownership actually changes, not when you sign, not when the money arrives, but when it records. Once it records, the buyer owns the house and your proceeds are released.

What I am doing during all of this

Chasing it. Most of the value in this stretch is someone making sure the lender ordered the appraisal, the inspector's report reached the right inbox, the contractor scheduled for a repair actually turned up, and nobody is quietly waiting on somebody else.

You should not have to find out on day twenty-five that something stalled on day twelve. That is the main reason I keep every client on a private page where the offers, the dates and the activity log all sit in one place, so you can see where things stand without calling me to ask.

What throws a timeline off

• A buyer whose loan was never really approved. The most common cause, and the most avoidable, because it is visible in the offer if you read the loan file rather than the price.
• A low appraisal. Manageable, and much easier when the price was defensible to begin with.
• Something the buyer discovers late. Which is another way of saying something the seller did not disclose early.
• Repairs that slip. Contractors are busy. Agreed work needs a date and somebody checking it.

Three of those four are decided before the house is ever listed. That is the point I would most want you to take from this: the smoothest escrows are not the lucky ones, they are the ones that were set up properly in the weeks before anyone made an offer.