Todd Explains when COE or close of escrow is in Nevada.

Hello. Welcome to Todd Miller TV. The topic today is, “In Nevada, when does close of escrow actually happen?” Meaning when do you either own the new house you’re buying or not own the previous house you just sold?

OK. Now first thing is we’re going to talk about what other states do because this will clear it up a lot. Believe me it will. OK. In most other states, they do something called round table closing. This is what that means. It means everyone sits around the table, the buyer, the seller, the lender, the realtor, and someone from the title company, escrow company.

They all sign all the paperwork, sitting, passing it around and sign it. Then once that’s done, they slide the keys over to the buyer. They disburse the checks. The agent gets the check. The seller gets the proceeds. A check is cut to pay off the loan if there is a loan and it’s closed. Everyone gets their money, keys passed, right? OK.

It doesn’t happen that way in Nevada. It just completely doesn’t happen that way. So people get frustrated when they come here to buy a house and it doesn’t happen the way they expect. This is what happens.

When you sign your documents as a buyer, you’re in there by yourself. You’re in this room going, “Where is everybody? Why aren’t the other sellers here and the agents and everybody?” They’re not there. You’re just signing loan docs. You may even have to give them like down payment money. Well, just because you gave money doesn’t mean you own the house. That money just goes to the lender or the docs go to the lender who then funds the loan which means they just send a wire to the title company.

Then the title company goes to the seller and goes, “Hey, I need you to sign some paperwork.” The seller signs. OK. Then everything is ready to go. It’s still not closed. Everybody has signed and what happens then is the title company gives the deed to a runner and says, “Take this down to the courthouse and go record it.”

So runner goes down there, stands in line, shows up. They stamp it, record it. He calls them back, and goes, “Hey, I just recorded 123 Elm Street.” At that point, the title company notifies everybody. Escrow is closed. What that means is that the buyer now legally owns but the seller doesn’t anymore.

The seller, their funds are available. They’re making funds available to pass the mortgage, paying the agents, pay everybody off and disburse all the funds. But the close of escrow in Nevada actually – escrow technically closes when it’s recorded.

So how to resolve issues. OK. If you’re a seller, and you really need your money, then you need to sit at the title company on the day that they’re doing the recording and the second they call back and say it’s recorded, say, “Give me my check.”

If you don’t, they’re going to mail you a check that can take a couple of days. If you ask for a wire transfer, it’s not happening that day because most of the recordings happen in the afternoon and by the time they get notification, they can’t set up a wire transfer for that day.

So just because you don’t have your money doesn’t mean you still own the house and as a buyer, just because you signed the paperwork doesn’t mean you now own the house. Even if you took the whole cash amount that was due to pay for that – pay off the house and gave it to the title company, until the date is recorded, you don’t own it. A lot of things have to happen for that.

So, if you have questions, you need to talk to your agent, talk to the lender about specifically how that operates and – because it can cause problems. People going into the house before they really own it, tried to take over the property and so anyway, that is my update for today. I hope to see you on another video. Thanks.