First Time Home-Buying: The Closing and The Keys

I should be almost done with my first time home-buying posts. The title should signify that. I’ll probably still post about the moving though because in that post, I can get nostalgic.

Today, I just put away all my homeowner’s documents away, all the documents that I received from that Escrow lady when we signed. As I learned and as I mentioned on my Signing post, closing is actually not when you sign the title and all that. The actual closing comes a couple of days later. Basically, closing is when your name is on the record for the property as received by the City. And then,they close your file.

For us, the closing came four days later and it felt like forever. The builders told us that we will close even if the items we found during the walkthrough were not completed yet. However, the mortgage bank people said they’ll send the money to the Escrow people as soon as the builders complete all the walkthrough items. I just let them argue among themselves. So to me, I said forget it, I’ll just stop thinking about it and stop emailing my mortgage lender for updates, because I’m sure they’ll call me when it’s ready.

Finally, I got a one-liner email that was so significant: “We are on record.” Even then I still haven’t done my Phoebe Buffay-esque celebratory dance. An hour later, I got a call to pick up the keys. Because Chef was at work, I picked it up myself. I didn’t go to the house immediately because my father had a move-in tradition that I wanted to follow.

So I had time to just hold the keys, look at it, even took a few pictures. There it was. Three sets of keys. And I was looking at it thinking, these little guys are my tools for passage to the second biggest commitment I have ever taken in my life (first was when I said “I do” to Chef ). Commitments are huge, obviously, and they scare the crap out of me. But then again, these huge steps are such defining moments in our lives. A house, or even a dwelling, that you own takes you to a whole other level of domestication. Scary, as I said, but I took it. I embraced it. And even if our main driver for this move was because we needed a tax break (seriously, been paying too much taxes! LOL!), there are added perks. Perks such as the title with our names on it. Another reason to pop the champagne – so I can use the builder’s wine bottle opener gift.