More detail on the closing process

I thought I would talk in more detail about the closing process and the costs involved. I plan on keeping a running tally of all the costs involved beyond purchase price so that anyone interested in doing something similar has a realistic idea of what to expect.

I took the whole day off work yesterday, and was busy all day. The first thing we had to do was fetch our key from the lockbox at the house, and then fetch our key for the mail box (the house has an assigned PO Box, since it is in an association).

Normally you do a final walkthrough with your realtor (we had a good experience with Karen Pettenati) before the closing, but we opted to skip that. Then we went down to Bebis Insurance and set up a homeowner’s insurance policy. The cost for a year was $525 and I had to pay a down payment of $120. Then, we went over to Winberg's True Value and made copies of the house keys and the mailbox keys ($13).

Then I brought the original mailbox key back to the Lakeville Carrier Annex, and went to the bank to get a bank check to pay for the house (I love the ladies at Community Bank, by the way!). Then my dad and I headed to the law offices of Wolverton & Himmelfarb to do the closing. Unfortunately the seller decided not to send a representative, so we had to wait around for a couple hours while the attorneys negotiated last-minute alterations to the contract over phone and email.

Closing costs and attorney fees ran me another $633.

After we had signed everything we could sign, we met up with Adam and went to the house for the first time as its owners. A friend of my father’s met us there to give us advice on taping and mudding the walls.

So that brings the running tally of costs above and beyond purchase price to: $1171

We are having a roll-off dumpster dropped off this weekend and then we start cleaning the place out. ‘Til then!