My husband and I had a unique situation to close our house. He was going to be working at a conference in another state and I would be closing our house solo. We were also staying in a hotel where his conference was until the morning of”closing day.” The morning of the closing day, we packed up the car for the hundredth time and I drove to our house.
The first thing on the agenda was the walk-through. My real estate agent met me at the house. This is where we checked that all of the finishes were done correctly. I also checked that the water and power was working. I turned on all of the sinks and showers. I also turned them on warm to make sure the water would get hot. And I flushed all of the toilets. I brought my phone charger to each room to try the outlets. I also turned on all of the light switches. It is important to have a checklist. That way, you can contact the builder to make sure to get any adjustments necessary to make your house move-in ready.
Closing solo took a bit of preparation. The next step started weeks in advance. First, we had to go to an attorney’s office to get “power of attorney” for my husband since he wouldn’t be there in person to sign. This was simple to do-the real estate agent told us an attorney’s office to contact and my husband and I just had to pop in, show our license, and sign a form.
We also had to have the money to close on the house. This is where things got a bit tricky, we use a national bank and the attorney’s office that we were closing through used a more local bank. We didn’t know how much we needed to close until the morning of the closing day. My husband put the money in our account. All I had to do was wire it to the bank. This is where things got complicated. The local bank said that they wouldn’t take money wires from our bank. I was unable to go to “our” bank because the closest bank was 3 hours away. I had to call my husband so he could get onto his computer account to make the transfer “wire.” Then, I had to check if the local bank had received it. It usually takes a while to show up at the bank after it is wired. So, I literally went the the closing meeting just hoping that it went through. Thank god the attorney had gotten a confirmation email that it did go through.
After what felt like five hours of signing all of the paperwork, the house was finally ours. I was so excited! It is an amazing feeling to close on the house of your dreams. I couldn’t wait to go into the house and finally feel like it is mine. I enjoyed this feeling for the rest of the night-until I had to check into a hotel and leave my amazing house. The movers weren’t coming for another four days-possibly the longest four days of my life.
Themovingmrs 