Real Estate Broker Eric Andrews explains that the average time to close on a house after making an offer to purchase is usually 45 – 60 days in North Carolina. He also shares an interesting story about a property which closed in 2 hours! Wow.
Speaker 1: Once the offer to purchase is made, how long does it take to close on a house?
Speaker 2: Two hours is my record, that’s my record. Seriously, two hours is my record. I had a 12 acre piece of land, it was my listing, the buyers were doing a 1031, they had cash, they had a deadline of that day and we negotiated the deal. We went under contract at noon and we closed and recorded at four o’clock. That was a great effort between two local real estate attorneys that were cooperating and saying, let’s get this done. That is the record. It’s not anywhere close to the norm. Really, the quickest you could get it done would be in two or three days, because you want to have a comprehensive title search, make sure everybody owns it.
But realistically, we’re telling everybody between 45 and 60 days. Between 45 and 60 days is going to give you roughly between two weeks and 30 days of due diligence, so you can investigate whether or not you wish to buy this house or property via inspections. Also, you might want to do an appraisal and a survey. So if nothing comes up in that 30 days, now you say, okay, I’m going to move forward, and it’s not a sure thing until that due diligence date is done, and now the sellers are like, okay, we actually have to pack up our stuff and go. So, if it’s a house and they’re living in it, that gives them a few weeks, gives them two to four weeks to pack up and move.
Speaker 1: Even the bank’s going to want to pull your transcripts from IRS.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah.
Speaker 1: That takes a few weeks.
Speaker 2: Well, amongst the self-employed. The self-employed have it worse, but regular Joe Schmos, it usually goes a little bit smoother or whatever, but, that’s a good point, we have someone that’s self employed, there is extra documentation that’s needed. I would definitely be closer to the 60 than the 45. One of the tough things is everyone loves their computer right now and everybody gets online and instead of having a relationship with a local banker or a lender, they have some guy from, or woman from California that they don’t know and they’re like, 30 day close, no problem, and then they’re like double wide. We didn’t know it was a double wide. We don’t do double wide. I mean, something will come up that national lenders in California aren’t used to that we have in North Carolina.
So a lot of lenders promise, oh yeah I can get it done 21 days, 30 days or whatever, and it’s not smart to put yourself in that situation. The real estate agents aren’t lazy. We want to get paid. We love stuff that closes in 21 or 30 days, but it’s not realistic. There’s too many hoops to jump through, 45 to 60 is the norm. If you bought a house five to eight years ago, you’re like pfft, I got it done in 30 days. That was the norm back then, but the norm now is 45 to 60 days.
