House 11 Escrow Closed!

Escrow closed yesterday and I am now the official owner! The sellers have two days to move out, per our contract, and I will have the keys on Sunday. I'm still working with their agent to figure out the logistical details of me getting the keys, but that should be done today. There were a couple interesting things I had to sign for this escrow: The title company needed copies of the Articles of Incorporation of my LLC and then I had to sign a statement confirming the LLC was still in existence and had not been amended in any way. Then the listing agent needed me to sign some disclosures releasing them from liability for the condition of the property, that I elected not to purchase a home warranty, and that I waived my final walkthrough inspection. The nice part about this was that nothing I signed had to be notarized, so I never had to go in to the title company to sign anything. They had a courier bring stuff to my office, I signed it, and they had a courier come back and pick it up and return it to them. Sweet!

I called the electrician back and re-scheduled the appointment for next Thursday and Friday. I also called the electric company and city to get the power, water, sewer, and trash put into my name, effective Monday. Interestingly, the city needed the name of the escrow company and escrow number for this. On the plus side, they allowed me to put the service in the name of the LLC, since that is who is on the deed. With the electric company, if I did that, I would be required to pay a deposit since the LLC hasn't had service with them before.

On Sunday, I am planning on heading out to the property and going over it to make a list of all the fixes I need my handyman to make. I'll base this on the inspector's report and other cosmetic things I find. I'm also going to need to buy a dishwasher and garbage disposal and get those installed. If the store I buy them from offers free or cheap installation, I'll take it. Otherwise, I'll probably have my handyman install them. One thing I learned from my last property is to never have the appliances delivered and installed on a Saturday. If something goes wrong, as it did last time, there is no one to contact so the problem can be fixed that day because the main office will be closed. I'll save a lot of time and headache if I just take a couple hours off work and wait for them to show up on a weekday.

Budget-wise, I'm close to on track. I budgeted $750 for escrow fees for both the buying and selling of the property. The fees for buying only ran $222, so I've got more than half of that left for the selling costs. My repair costs may be a bit over the $2,500 I budgeted, mainly because of the electrical work that needs to be done. The estimate for that was $1,500, but that was just a guess. I'll have a definitive figure once the guy gets in there and starts working. That leaves $1,000 for my handyman and appliances. The dishwasher and garbage disposal will probably run about $300 total, leaving $700 for the handyman. This may be within reason, but I'm not sure. Again, once I get in there and make a list of what needs to be done, I'll have a better idea.