What Actually Happens After You Accept a Cash Offer on Your House

Most people who sell a house directly to a buyer have never done it before. They know how a listing works, roughly, because everyone does. But "I accepted a cash offer" is a sentence that comes with no picture of what happens next, and the silence between signing and closing is where sellers start to wonder if the whole thing is real.

It is real, and it is boring in a good way. Here is the entire sequence, in the order it happens, the way it works on our deals in Pinellas County, the rest of Tampa Bay, New Jersey and eastern Pennsylvania.

1. You sign the purchase agreement, on your schedule

Accepting an offer is a conversation. Nothing is binding until you sign a written purchase agreement. That document says the price, the closing date, what the buyer covers, what happens to anything left in the property, and what each side can do if the other does not perform.

Read it. Ask about anything you do not understand. Send it to your attorney, your sibling, your accountant. A buyer who pressures you to sign the same afternoon is telling you something about how the rest of the deal will go. We send the agreement, answer questions, and wait.

2. The agreement goes to a title company

The signed agreement is delivered to a licensed title company, which opens a file and orders a title search. In New Jersey an attorney is involved on each side as well; in Florida and Pennsylvania the title company runs the closing directly.

This is the first place sellers hear nothing for a week or two and get nervous. Nothing is wrong. The title company is doing the one thing that has to happen before anyone can close: finding out exactly who owns the property and what is attached to it.

3. Title search: what they are looking for

The search goes through the public records for the property and turns up anything that would have to be cleared before a clean deed can pass. On older houses, that list is rarely empty. Common findings:

• An old mortgage that was paid off but never formally released. Very common. The lender is contacted for a release.
• A judgment or lien. Municipal liens, code-enforcement fines, a contractor's lien, an old credit judgment. These get paid at closing out of the proceeds, or disputed and resolved before closing.
• Back taxes. Paid at closing, like a mortgage.
• A person on title who never signed off. A former spouse, a deceased parent whose estate was never probated, a sibling who was added years ago. This is the finding that takes the longest, because it means paperwork from someone other than you.

The title company tells you and the buyer what it found and what it takes to clear each item. On most of our deals the list is cleared in the normal course of the closing. On some it is not, and that is where the closing date moves, which brings us to the two places deals actually slow down.

4. Where deals slow down, and what to expect

Estates. If the owner of record has died and the estate has not been opened, someone has to be appointed to sign for it. In Florida that is a personal representative; in New Jersey an executor or administrator, plus a state tax waiver before a deed can record; in Pennsylvania, letters testamentary from the county. A good buyer knows this on the first call, tells you what documents the estate needs, and helps the family get them. It is not a reason not to sell. It is a reason to start early.

Payoffs. When there is a mortgage, a lien or back taxes, the title company has to get a written payoff figure from each creditor, good through the closing date. Some lenders take two days. Some take two weeks. The number can only be final when every payoff letter is in.

Neither of these is anyone's fault, and neither one changes the price. They change the date. The agreement should already say what happens if the date has to move, and a buyer who is doing this right will tell you the moment it looks like it will.

5. One walkthrough. Only one.

Before closing, we visit the property once. We are confirming that what we are buying is what we discussed on the phone and in the records. We are not looking for reasons to cut the number.

If we find something material that nobody knew about, a collapsed sewer line, a second structure that is not on the county's records, we tell you what it is and what it changes, in writing, and you decide. If we find what we expected, which is nearly always, the walkthrough takes twenty minutes and you never think about it again.

6. The closing statement

A few days before closing, the title company sends a settlement statement. One page, or close to it. On it: the sale price, each payoff being made from the proceeds, the closing costs (on our deals, ours), and the number that is wired to you. Read it against what you were told on the first call. They should match. If there is a line you do not recognize, ask before you sign, not after.

7. Closing day

You sign the deed and a short stack of documents. In Florida and Pennsylvania this can be done at the title company, at your kitchen table with a mobile notary, or by mail if you are out of state. In New Jersey your attorney handles your side. Once the deed is signed and the buyer's funds are in escrow, the title company records the deed and wires your proceeds, usually the same day or the next business day.

You hand over the keys, or you do not, if we agreed you could stay for a while after closing. That arrangement, if you need it, goes in the purchase agreement in writing, not as a favor.

8. What you left behind is now ours

Furniture, a garage full of tools, the shed nobody has opened in a decade, the things in the attic. If it is in the property at closing, it is our responsibility from that moment on. You do not come back to clean. That is not a courtesy; it is the point of selling this way.

The short version

• Sign when you are ready, not before.
• Two quiet weeks while title does its job is normal.
• Title findings change the date, not the price.
• One walkthrough, then the settlement statement, then closing on your date.
• Leave what you do not want.

If you want to see the number that starts all of this, here is how we build it, and the local pages for Pinellas County, New Jersey and eastern Pennsylvania cover what is different in each place.