Eleven weeks late to close because everyone assumed someone else was clearing the estate exception

The thing I take from this is that the commitment looks like a finished document and it isn't. It's a punch list with an insurance policy attached to the end of it. I don't think I understood that until now.

$14,000 plus a permanently worse rate on a $612k deal is brutal for something that was written down on day nine. Did the extension deposit at least apply to the purchase price, or was that purely gone?

Files that go sideways tend to have this exact shape. Three competent parties, each one assuming the item belonged to another one. Nobody was lazy. The item just had no owner. A shared tracking sheet on anything with more than two requirements outstanding, one line per item, one name, one date, looks like overkill until the week it isn't.

Weekly status is too slow for an eleven week hole. Make it Monday and Thursday once anything sits past ten days.

I'd say the real cause is that you had a contract deadline four weeks out with a known probate-flavored requirement and no extension mechanism priced in. On my deals I assume estate items take six to ten weeks from the day someone actually starts, because you're waiting on a court calendar and a county clerk, neither of which cares about your rate lock.

The tracking sheet is good. Building the schedule around the slowest possible item is better.

@joe_delgado5 that's the version I agree with. Scope creep on a renovation and curative creep on a closing are the same animal. The item you name on day one takes as long as it takes, the damage comes from the schedule you built assuming it wouldn't.

Slightly different read. The title company flagged it, so they did their job as an insurer. But if I'm paying settlement fees I expect a curative status on a defined cadence without asking, and plenty of shops do provide that. Warrant, was this a high volume residential closer handling a small commercial file? That combination is where I've seen the follow-through gap.

Also worth being clear on which state, since estate curative practice differs enormously between attorney closing states and title agent closing states, and who is expected to drive it changes with that.

Ask who's holding the ball out loud, in front of everyone, on the call. It feels rude the first ten times. It saves months.

I've got no closings behind me yet, so this may be a dumb question. Did all four of you see the commitment, or just you? I'd have assumed the LLC members each get a copy and read it.

@bmoreno23 in practice one person reads it and the rest trust that person, which is fine as long as the reader knows they're the only reader. Warrant clearly did, that's why he owns this post.

The cost I'd flag for anyone modeling this is the rate. The $14,000 is one time and annoying. The 45 basis points rides the whole hold and shows up in every refinance or sale decision you make on that property. Extension costs and re-lock exposure belong in the underwriting as a line, not as an afterthought.

Many buyers slow-walk a first purchase for exactly this reason. The lesson worth writing down isn't about title specifically. It's that a document arriving on time is not the same as work happening, and it's easy to default to reading arrival as progress when it isn't.