Silicon Valley home buyers (and sellers) are faced with a myriad of questions and choices when completing or reviewing residential real estate contracts to purchase the property. One of them, early on, is whether or not a particular day is chosen for closing escrow or if instead it’s a number of days from contract formation (acceptance) to closing.
Which is better?
The are pros and cons to each approach, of course. Many buyers want to be able to plan, without any ambiguity, when they will move in to their new home. (For some this can be a matter of feng shui, astrology or a sense that some days are more fortuitous than others.) This can work if negotiations are not protracted.
With distressed sales, though – bank owned properties (REOs) and short sales – and sometimes with multiple offers, the negotiations time frame can be hard to predict and if you pick one particular date, you may well have to change it later or find that you don’t really have enough time because a week or more gotten “eaten up” with counter offers, waiting for a bank or seller to respond or other delays. In those cases you may want to have the flexibility of writing in the length of escrow (number of days) rather than picking a certain date.
As always, talk with your professional real estate licensee for guidance as each case may be different.
