Unfortunately, the question “how quickly can you close” is impossible to answer. Anyone who says differently, to quote the Dread Pirate Roberts, is selling something. How quickly can we close? It all depends.

Why?

Well, here’s the thing. Every property is unique, and the ownership history of every property is different. Even if two properties are physically identical, their titles certainly won’t be, and there is absolutely no way to know beforehand how simple or complicated a property’s title may be. The examiner has to get into the records just to see what those records will look like.

(If we could know beforehand, we certainly would have done better on our Divination O.W.L.s. Predicting the future isn’t really our strong suit.)

But even if a title is relatively simple, that’s no guarantee that things can happen fast. Say, for example, a property’s title is clean with only one mortgage to pay off. Some lenders will get us a payoff within hours of us requesting it. Fewer lenders will take days. Even fewer will take weeks. Say there’s a clean title with a first and a second mortgage. Same thing. Say there’s a clean title with a first mortgage, a second mortgage, and a homeowners’ association. You guessed it: the same thing.

You see the point. For a closing to happen, there are a lot of individual elements that have to come together. All of them take time, and it is impossible to predict how much time any particular one will take for any particular property. Again, anyone who says differently is selling something.

That doesn’t mean we can’t make generalizations, though. For metro-Atlanta properties, title exams typically come back in two to four business days. Mortgage payoffs also typically come back in two to four business days. So if the traffic signals in the sky all turn green, then things can happen in just days. We’ve handled thousands of closings that have taken less than a week from start to finish. But we’ve also handled closings that have taken much longer.

The plain truth is that any individual closing will take the time it takes, but we’ll always work hard to get things done as quickly as possible for you.

Harlan Florence is an Atlanta-based boutique law firm that believes there's a better way to handle your real estate closing. We'd love to work with you. Contact us today, and let's see what we can do together.

File Status

Get the latest on your closing here with your file number and property zip code. Don't know your file number? Just let us know!

Fee Sheet Request

Sharing is Caring