What's Your Region's Policy On Home Possession?

When I'm helping someone relocate to the Denver area, I occasionally have a buyer that's just amazed about how we handle possession after closing. Here in Denver, the custom is for the new buyer to give the seller 2-3 days to move out after closing. Colorado isn't an escrow state, but a table funding state. What that means, is that when an offer to purchase has been agreed ed to between the buyers and sellers, the buyers through their real estate broker start the process of taking the transaction to completion. This includes doing the inspections, negotiating any inspection issues with the sellers, ordering the appraisal, reviewing the title work, and shepherding the buyers through the loan approval process. All this is done with the eye on meeting the closing date specified in the original offer to purchase. During this time, the seller's broker is guiding and giving advice to the seller, as needed. Once the loan is approved the buyers and sellers meet, usually at a title company's office, to do the closing. At this time, all the documents are signed for the transfer of the real estate and the origination of the new loan. Once this happens, the closing is done and over. No adjustments are made by the lender, buyers, or sellers. At this time the buyers own the home and are entitled to immediate possession.

Sometimes buyers come from states where once the keys are handed over to the buyers, the sellers have already vacated the property. They can't understand why, as a buyer, they would allow someone two to three days free "rent" as they move out of the property. In the market they just came from, they would go right from the closing to moving into their new home. While I admit this may sound strange, it's pretty much standard operation procedure, here in Denver. There are some definite benefits to this type of system. What if the buyers default at the last minute, through a job loss or change of heart? What if they were declined for the loan at the last minute? To protect our sellers, we need to move up the date for loan approval as much as possible. I think having that date be a few days before closing is not in our sellers best interest. If you've been in this business for any length of time, I'm sure you've represented buyers or sellers that were in a chain. What I meant is, someone was selling to someone else who was selling, who was also relying on somone else to close on their home. If all these closings were set to occur on the same day with all of these sellers showing up at closings with their belongins on the moveing van, only to have the first people in the chanin fail to close, you can see what a mess it could become.

At the same time, I can appreciate how nice is can be to have the house vacated and ready for the new buyers right after closing. You don't have to worry about a seller taking something that was to be left behind, as specified in the purchase contract. There's nothing worse than to get a call from your buyers informing you that the sellers took the refrigerator that was supposed to be included. There's also that piece of mind that you know the sellers didn't damage anything on the way out.

As I said before, I can see advantages to both systems. What system does your region use and what tips do you have to minimize problems?