I just bought a home, what now?

Congratulations!  Finding the home, you want to purchase can be incredibly challenging.  The hard part is probably over from your perspective, but we’ll still need you to check off a few more tasks so that we can prepare for your closing.

First, please provide us with a copy of your purchase agreement as soon as possible.  Once we have this, we can start completing the searches we need to do in order to make sure everything is in order for the closing date.  If you have an electronic copy of the agreement, please email it to our office.  If you don’t have an electronic copy, please ask your real estate agent to provide us with a copy of the agreement.  Once we have a copy of your agreement, we will open our file and follow up with an email to you setting out the next steps and requesting the additional information we’ll need from you.

Second, you will need to arrange for any mortgage financing that you require.  Once you have signed documents with your mortgage broker or bank, the lender will send us mortgage instructions directly.  These instructions tell us exactly how much money the lender will be providing towards the purchase as well as what documents we need to prepare in order to receive funding from the lender.  We like to receive mortgage instructions as soon as possible in the process, but we can work with you even if the instructions arrive late.

Third, you will need to arrange for insurance on your new home.  In most cases we will need your insurance broker will need to send us confirmation that you have insurance in place for the closing date that will cover the full replacement value of the home in case of fire.

Fourth, you will need to contact the utility providers for your new home and provide them with the information they need from you to set up your new accounts.  If you are buying in the Toronto area, we will include a list of contact numbers for the utility providers with our initial email.

Those are the main tasks for you to take care of while we take care of the rest.  As mentioned, we will send you an initial email setting out the process in more detail and requesting information from you so that we can complete the paperwork for the closing.

We will also need to meet with you to review and sign documents prior to closing. Normally we do this a week or so prior to closing and we ask that you bring the balance of funds required to this meeting.  We will provide you with a financial summary prior to this meeting that will show you exactly how much we still need from you.