How long does a Florida title search and closing take?

The contract. The closing date is the one the parties wrote in, and the periods that run before it are the ones they wrote in or left to the form's defaults. On the Florida Realtors/Florida Bar “AS IS” Residential Contract for Sale and Purchase, the inspection period is the number of days written into paragraph 12(a), or 15 if it was left blank, counted from the effective date. The form's other periods, for delivering title evidence, for the buyer's review of the commitment and the seller's cure, and for loan approval, are the ones written into the executed contract or left to its defaults, and the executed contract is where to read them.

What a title agency can say is how long each piece of the work takes when it is ordered on the first day, which is the subject of the rest of this page.

We order the search the day we receive the file. A search can be rushed, and a rushed search often comes back within 24 hours. The examination follows, and a search that turns something up takes as long as reading what it turned up.

What the search has to establish is set by statute. A title insurer may not issue a commitment or a policy until it has determined insurability, and that determination must rest on “a reasonable search” of the records, the examination of whatever else is necessary, and sound underwriting practices (Fla. Stat. § 627.7845(1)). The evidence of that search and determination is kept for at least 7 years after the commitment or policy is issued (§ 627.7845(2)). So the commitment is not a form filled in from the deed: it is issued after the record has been read, and a search that turns something up takes as long as reading what it turned up.

How far back the record is read is a question people ask, and Florida's marketable record title act is the reason the answer is measured in decades: a person who has been vested with an estate of record for 30 years or more has a marketable record title, free of claims except those the act preserves (Fla. Stat. § 712.02).

The commitment comes after the examination, and it lists what has to be cleared before the policy can issue: the seller's mortgage to be paid off, a judgment to be satisfied, an estoppel to be obtained, a permit to be closed. Each of those has its own deadline, held by someone else, and the rest of this page is those deadlines in the order they usually bite.

What we do on the day the commitment issues is put every requirement in writing to both sides, with who holds it and what it will take. A requirement nobody has been told about is the one that moves a closing date.

10 days. A mortgagee or servicer must send an estoppel letter, stating the unpaid balance as of a date and the interest accruing each day after it, within 10 days after receipt of a written request from the mortgagor or someone acting for them (Fla. Stat. § 701.04(1)(a)). If the 10th day falls on a weekend or holiday, the letter is timely if it is sent by the close of business on the next business day (§ 701.04(1)(f)2.).

We order it the day the file opens, which is why the payoff is rarely the item that moves a date. A judgment or a lien is ordered the same way, from the creditor, in writing; the judgment page describes what happens when the creditor is slow.

After the closing, the lender has 60 days from the day the loan is paid in full to execute a release, have it acknowledged, send it for recording and send the recorded release to the owner (§ 701.04(2)(a)), and a lienholder or judgment creditor has the same 60 days (§ 701.04(3)). That deadline runs after the closing and does not hold it up, but we follow it until the release is on record, because an old mortgage left open is a problem at the next sale.

10 business days. A condominium or homeowners' association must issue an estoppel certificate within 10 business days of a written or electronic request, and if it misses that, no fee may be charged for it (Fla. Stat. § 718.116(8); § 720.30851). The certificate is then good for 30 days if delivered by hand or electronically and 35 days by mail, so one ordered too early expires and has to be reordered. The fees and the rules are in the estoppel certificate fees guide.

An association's approval of the buyer is a separate clock, set by the association's own documents rather than by statute, and it is the one that most often decides a condominium closing date. The approval page covers it.

As long as the city says. A title search reads the county's official records; what the city holds against the property, open permits, code cases, unpaid utility balances, special assessments, is found by a separate search directed to the city, which prices and times it as it likes. Some cities answer in a day or two, some take a week or more, and some sell an expedited answer. What each city publishes is on its own page, city by city. We order the search with the title search, on every file.

What it turns up can take longer than the search did: an open permit has to be closed by the municipality, and that is the buyer's to arrange on the “AS IS” form. The open permit page describes it.

Three, all in Regulation Z, and all counted in business days.

• The Loan Estimate. The lender must deliver or mail it no later than the third business day after it receives the borrower's application (12 C.F.R. § 1026.19(e)(1)(iii)(A)). That one runs at the start and rarely touches the closing date.
• The Closing Disclosure. The lender must ensure the borrower receives it no later than three business days before consummation (§ 1026.19(f)(1)(ii)(A)). This is the deadline that sets the last week of a financed closing: the figures have to be final, on both sides, three business days before the signing.
• A new three days. If, before consummation, the annual percentage rate becomes inaccurate, the loan product changes, or a prepayment penalty is added, the lender must issue corrected disclosures and a new three-business-day period runs (§ 1026.19(f)(2)(ii)). A rate lock that expires in the last week is how a closing slips by three days.

On a refinance of the borrower's home by a new lender, a fourth period runs after the signing: each owner may rescind until midnight of the third business day, and no money may be disbursed until it expires (12 C.F.R. § 1026.23(a), (c)). The refinance page covers it.

Nothing changes before the closing, and one deadline is added after it. Where the seller is a foreign person, the buyer withholds 15% of the amount realized at the closing, unless an exception applies, and must report and pay it over within 20 days of the transfer. The figures are on the FIRPTA withholding page. A seller who expects to owe less than the withholding applies to the IRS for a withholding certificate before the closing, and the IRS takes time to decide it; that application is the one FIRPTA step that can move a date, and it belongs with the seller's tax adviser at contract, not the week of closing.

A seller who is abroad also has to sign from abroad, and consular appointment availability can drive the closing date by itself. The signing-from-abroad page describes the three ways it is done.

The deed is recorded, and is notice to everyone, the moment the clerk affixes its official register number; the sequence of those numbers determines priority (Fla. Stat. § 695.11). So a slow office delays when the deed appears in the index and comes back to the file, not its place in the chain of title.

How long that takes is each office's own. Of Florida's 67 recording offices, 22 publish a statement about it, most saying only that same-day recording is not guaranteed unless the document is walked in, and a few putting a number on it. What each office publishes is on one page, in the office's own words.

The same few things, file after file:

1. An approval someone else gives: an association's approval of the buyer, a court's order on a sale from an estate or a bankruptcy, a lender's clear to close.
2. A requirement found late: a judgment, an open permit, a lien, a missing heir, each of which takes as long as the person who has to clear it. The remedy is the search ordered on day one and the requirements put in writing the day the commitment issues.
3. A changed loan: a new rate, a new product or a lapsed lock in the last week restarts the lender's three business days.
4. A signature that has to travel: a seller abroad, a power of attorney that has to be drawn and approved, an entity whose authority has to be documented.
5. Money that is not collected: a wire that has not landed, or a check that has not cleared, on the morning of closing.

What does not move a date is the title premium, the taxes or the recording charge: those are set by rule and statute and are the same on the first day of the file as on the last.

When a deadline is contested: a seller who says the buyer's notice came late, a buyer who says the seller did not cure, a lender's condition the parties read differently. Each of those is a question about what the contract says, which is for the parties' own attorneys, not the closing agent.