[tcoppi]

We bought a house last year with a credit union, and everyone during closing was quite surprised that we actually closed within two hours of starting. Apparently it is not unheard of for mortgage lenders to be doing final approval up to the day of closing, and keeping people on hold/not answering phones while you and the seller are sitting there twiddling your thumbs.

[sokoloff]

Both of mine (1996 and 2007) were under an hour, and that was gated on me reading each of the docs and validating the figures on the HUD-1, which I demanded they present to me the afternoon before and I scheduled both closings to start at 4 PM.

On both HUD-1s, I found "innocent mistakes" that would have been against my interests by a few hundred dollars. I started to believe that those weren't so innocent after all, but rather calculated to get people to just sign over an extra few hundred dollars to get things over with. Starting that argument at 10 AM by email was a way more effective use of my time than raising it (or caving) during the closing. "If you don't have this sorted, we'll have to reschedule the closing" is effective motivation for the real estate agents and mortgage broker, whose commissions are on the line.

[ryandrake]

This is one of the reasons why a seller would accept an all-cash offer significantly lower than a competing offer where the buyer requires financing. No seller wants to wait around for a lender to figure out how to do the one thing they're being asked to do.

[markvdb]

Hah. Only days?

In Belgium, it takes three to four months. Plus about 15% of the purchase price in taxes, sky high monopoly notary fees and more.

[thwarted]

That was exactly my experience when buying my first home back in 2003. There's a lot of information out there about buying a home, but very little of it is actually useful for first time home buyers, IMO. The mortgage company literally waited until the last minute to approve everything (or the broker waited until the last minute to tell us). Meanwhile, we had no place to stay if it fell through because we'd already ended our lease on the place we were before, and didn't really have the luxury to tack another week or so on closing if there were issues.