I recently accepted an offer from someone to purchase my house. The buyer has gotten his loan approved from a bank based on the west coast, called East-West Bank. I will refer to them as The Bank. My realtor has obtained and forwarded to me a loan commitment letter from the bank. Since his loan was approved, I went ahead and moved out of my house and signed a lease on an apartment. The closing has been scheduled, postponed and rescheduled 3 times at the request of The Bank, usually with little notice. The Bank is claiming it’s caused by the backlog and short handedness due to the holidays. Finally, yesterday, Dec 27 we went to close. The closing was a comedy of errors. We went through the usual cycle of handing me documents to sign. I noticed that the Buyers name was misspelled on the title document. I pointed that out to the closing attorney and he replaced it with an accurate document. Later, it was discovered that The Bank had put both the Buyers name and his wife’s name on one of the documents when only the Buyers name is on the loan application. So, the closing attorney had to try and get a hold of The Bank to get this corrected and had no success in reaching them. After 3 hours, they told me that I had signed all the documents I needed to and I could leave. They told me to leave the keys to the house there and they would distribute them once they got things straightened out with The Bank and the money would be wired to my bank account later the same day or the next day. They told me I may have to come back and re-sign some of the documents. I told them I was taking the keys and would hand them over once the money showed up in my bank account.
I am hesitant to rely on The Bank to wire the funds to my account in a timely manner. I’m sure they will do so, but probably not without a hassle.
