You’ve finally made it to the end – only two more steps to go. Now comes the painful one; parting with your hard earned dollars. It’s time to pay the down payment and the closing costs.
The morning before closing, your mortgage lender will email you an estimate of your down payment and closing costs (remember closing costs are usually 2 – 3% of the purchase price of the property). In addition, your mortgage lender will ask you to transfer over a little extra money (usually around $1500 – $2000) just in case the closing cost figures are off at all. For example if you’re buying a $1 million dollar property and you’re putting 20% down, your mortgage lender will ask you to wire transfer approximately $232,000 ($200K for the down payment, $30K for the closing costs and an extra $2K). Generally you won’t get this figure until the morning before closing and it HAS to be transferred that same day (ie. the day before closing). Your mortgage lender or attorney will also email you the wire transfer instructions which gives you the account number to send the wire transfer. Plan to take a long lunch break from work as you have to go into your bank in order to conduct a wire transfer. Make sure you find out what time your bank stops accepting same day wire transfers as it’s not the same as their regular business hours. Therefore, they may be open until 8pm, but the cut off for same day wire transfers is 3pm. In that scenario, you’re going to need to finish the wire transfer prior to 3pm. We can’t state loudly enough how important it is that the wire transfer be done the day before. If you don’t transfer the funds the day before closing, closing has to be delayed because the Title company will not accept a cash or check.
Once you’ve sent over the wire transfer, email our team, your mortgage lender, and your attorney so we can check to make sure the Title company received the funds. IMPORTANT: do NOT follow wire transfer instructions unless they were sent to you by the escrow closer from the Title company. We cannot stress enough that all wire transfer and financial instructions will come via password protected or by encrypted email from the escrow closer and not from me or your attorney. There are a lot of scammers out there who have been hacking into Realtor and attorney emails lately and sending buyers fraudulent wire transfer instructions in an attempt to divert your $ into their accounts. Before you transfer your funds, call the escrow closer directly to confirm the wire-transfer instructions. DO NOT rely on the phone number in the email as this number could be fraudulent as well if the email is fraudulent. Look up the phone number for the escrow closer through Google or by asking the attorney and call that number instead. We cannot stress enough how careful you need to be when sending over your wire transfer to make sure it isn’t being directed to a fraudulent account.
Just a reminder, at closing you’ll get a refund check back made out to you for the overage closing cost funds you transferred.
