Step 27 - Wire Transfer your Down Payment

Now It’s Time to Wire Transfer Your Funds to Close

You’ve finally made it to the end – only two more steps to go.  Now comes the painful one; parting with your hard-earned dollars. It’s time to pay the down payment and the closing costs.

Your mortgage lender will email you an estimate of your down payment and closing costs (remember closing costs are usually 4 – 6% of the purchase price of the property). In addition, your mortgage lender will ask you to transfer over a little extra money (usually around $1500 – $2000) just in case the closing cost figures are off at all. For example, if you’re buying a 1 million dollar property and you’re putting 20% down, your mortgage lender will ask you to wire transfer approximately $260,000 ($200K for the down payment, $60K for the closing costs, and an extra $2K). Generally, you will get this figure 2-3 days before closing, however, there are occasions where sometimes it is the morning of closing. Wire transfers should be done no sooner or later than the day before closing. If for some reason a wire transfer cannot be done by then, you should bring a cashier’s/certified bank check. If the funds are not available on the day of closing, you will most likely delay closing and not be able to get the house keys that day.

Once you’ve sent over the wire transfer, email our team, your mortgage lender, and your attorney so we can check to make sure the Title company received the funds. IMPORTANT: do NOT follow wire transfer instructions unless they were sent to you by the escrow closer from the Title company. We cannot stress enough that all wire transfer and financial instructions will come via password-protected or encrypted email from the escrow closer. There are a lot of scammers out there who have been hacking into Realtor and attorney emails lately and sending buyers fraudulent wire transfer instructions in an attempt to divert your $ into their accounts.  Before you transfer your funds, call the escrow closer directly to confirm the wire transfer instructions. DO NOT rely on the phone number in the email as this number could be fraudulent as well if the email is fraudulent. Look up the phone number for the escrow closer through Google or by asking the attorney and call that number instead. We cannot stress enough how careful you need to be when sending over your wire transfer to make sure it isn’t being directed to a fraudulent account.

Just a reminder, at closing you’ll get a refund check back made out to you for the overage closing cost funds you transferred.