Copy the dates out on day one
The executed contract contains a handful of deadlines, and they are the only dates in the whole process that can cost you real money. Miss a contingency deadline and you may lose the right to walk away — which means losing the deposit, not merely the house.
They are also easy to lose, because they arrive in a forty-page document at the most chaotic point in the process. Copy them onto the table at the bottom of the sheet the day the contract is signed:
Earnest money delivered
Inspection contingency expires ← usually the shortest
Repair request due
Appraisal contingency expires
Financing contingency expires
Title objection deadline
Closing Disclosure received ← 3 business days before closing
Final walkthrough
Closing
The inspection window is typically seven to ten days and it starts immediately. Book the inspection on day one, not on day four.
The delay is nearly always the buyer
Underwriting is slower than anyone expects, and the reason is almost always a document the lender asked for and has not received.
It compounds, too: each document arriving separately triggers its own review cycle, so four documents sent over two weeks takes far longer than four documents sent together on day one. The most useful thing a buyer can do in the entire process is answer every lender request the day it arrives, completely.
Do not touch your finances
Underwriting re-verifies credit and employment shortly before closing. Until the loan funds:
- No new credit — not a card, not a car, not store finance
- No job change, and no move from salaried to self-employed
- No large deposits that cannot be documented
- No moving money between accounts unnecessarily
- No paying off collections without asking the lender first
People genuinely lose houses buying furniture on credit in the final fortnight. The lender is not being difficult; they are re-running the calculation that approved you.
Read the title exceptions
The title search comes back and almost nobody reads it. It is the document that tells you what you can actually do with the land: easements crossing the property, encroachments, restrictions, unresolved liens.
An easement running down the side of the garden is not a defect and it is also not something you want to discover after planning an extension there.
Wire fraud
The most serious risk in the entire process, and the one nobody warns first-time buyers about.
Criminals monitor real estate transactions — often through a compromised email account somewhere in the chain — and send convincing wire instructions at precisely the right moment, with the right names, the right amounts and the right file numbers. The money goes overseas within hours and is essentially never recovered.
The defence is absolute and takes two minutes: never accept wire instructions that arrive by email. Phone the title company or closing attorney on a number you already had — from the contract, from an earlier call, not from the email — and verify the details verbally.
If instructions change at the last minute, treat that as fraud until proven otherwise. Legitimate changes at the last minute are rare; fraudulent ones are common.
The final walkthrough
After the seller has moved out, as close to closing as possible. You are checking three things:
- Agreed repairs were actually done, to the standard agreed
- Everything included in the sale is still there — appliances, fittings, anything on the contract
- Nothing was damaged during the move-out — walls, floors, door frames
A walkthrough with the seller’s furniture still in place tells you very little, which is why it belongs in the last forty-eight hours rather than a week before.
Apply for the homestead exemption. Most states that offer one require an application, there is a deadline, the saving is annual and permanent, and nobody writes to tell you it exists.