The day the offer is accepted, the client celebrates and the agent knows the real work just started. Between signature and keys there are five or six weeks with a dozen deadlines running at once, almost all of them silent: nobody announces when one expires, the protection it carried simply disappears.
The good news is that most of those deadlines are not a mystery. They are printed in the contract your clients already signed. The Florida Realtors and Florida Bar "AS IS" form carries default periods for every blank left empty, and in practice a great many contracts are signed exactly that way. Everything below is taken from the text of the form in force on the review date above.
The deadlines the contract already sets
These run from the Effective Date (the day the last party signed and delivered) unless the parties write something else in the blank:
- Initial deposit: within 3 days, unless the contract says it accompanies the offer. And a detail that gets missed: if neither box is checked, the form treats "delivered later" as the option selected.
- Additional deposit, where there is one: within 10 days.
- Loan application: the buyer has 5 days to make it. This is the most-missed deadline and the most expensive one, because failing to apply on time and in good faith is a default under the contract.
- Loan Approval Period: 30 days.
- Inspection Period: 15 days, within which the buyer may terminate in their sole discretion and get the deposit back.
- Title evidence: at least 15 days before closing; 5 if it is a cash transaction.
- Survey: the buyer may obtain one, at their expense, up to 5 days before the Closing Date.
- Walk-through: the day before closing, or on the Closing Date prior to the time of closing, as the buyer chooses.
There is one more, recent and very Florida, worth having in mind from week one: if the buyer cannot obtain flood insurance on the terms the contract contemplates, there is a 20-day window from the Effective Date to terminate and recover the deposit. Everything behind that clause is in the guide on flood zones.
Week 1: deposit, disclosures and the lender clock
The first three days are pure logistics: deposit into escrow and written confirmation that it landed. In parallel two invisible clocks start: the buyer’s loan application and the insurance search. The agent who calls the lender on day one and the insurance agent on day two avoids half the surprises of the following month. Why insurance is the variable that kills the most closings in this state is a separate story: Florida homeowners insurance, explained.
If the property is a condo or sits in a homeowners association, this is also the week to request the documents and the estoppel. Not next week: that is the part of the process that wastes the most days by being requested late.
Week 2: inspection, and the real negotiation
The inspection gets scheduled in the first days of the period, not the last. A report delivered on day thirteen leaves two days to read it, get estimates and decide; delivered on day six, it leaves nine. Same inspection, two completely different negotiations.
In an "AS IS" contract, the post-inspection negotiation is not a right to repairs: it is a right to walk. That changes the conversation with the client, and it is worth having before the report arrives rather than after. This is also the moment for the four-point or wind mitigation inspections if the insurer asks for them.
Weeks 3 and 4: appraisal and underwriting
Here the file leaves everyone’s hands and enters the bank’s. The appraisal comes in at value or it does not; underwriting asks for documents everyone thought were settled; the buyer who changed jobs or opened a new credit card finds out that it mattered. The agent’s job in these two weeks is follow-up, not management: one weekly call to the lender with a concrete question — "what is missing today?" — beats ten courtesy emails.
If the appraisal comes in low there are three exits, and they are worth naming in advance: renegotiate the price, have the buyer bring the difference, or terminate as the contract allows. The conversation about rates, and about how much a half point moves a monthly payment, is in talking rates with buyers.
Weeks 4 and 5: title, survey and association paperwork
The title commitment arrives and with it the exceptions: easements, restrictions, some old lien nobody remembered. The survey may reveal a fence off the line or a pool encroaching on an easement. The association’s estoppel states what is actually owed. And if the seller is a foreign person for tax purposes, this is the week closing confirms the FIRPTA withholding — not closing day.
Who does what in this stretch, and why in Florida a closing can be handled by a title company or by an attorney, is covered in closing in Florida. When the file gets complicated, the title attorney is who untangles it.
Final days: clear to close, walk-through and signing
The lender’s clear to close is the signal that only paperwork and money remain. Then comes the closing statement to review line by line, the walk-through to confirm the house is as agreed and that what was staying is still there, and the signing. The buyer’s money moves by wire, never on improvised email instructions: wire fraud remains the most expensive scam in this business, and the rule that prevents it is a single one — confirm the details by phone, at the number you already knew, before sending anything.
Who does what, in one line each
- The agent holds the calendar: knows what expires this week and who has the ball, and says so in advance, not after.
- The broker sees every file at once and is the one who spots the deal falling behind while the team is looking elsewhere.
- The lender runs weeks two through four: application, appraisal, underwriting and the clear to close all leave their desk.
- The title attorney or title company searches title, resolves the exceptions, prepares the closing and withholds whatever has to be withheld.
- The inspector delivers the report you negotiate with, and the appraiser delivers the number the bank argues with. Neither one works for either party.
- And the association, where there is one, delivers documents and the estoppel, the only party on this list with no urgency, which is why its clock gets watched from day one.
If the property is tenant-occupied there is one more player and one more deadline: the contract requires the seller to furnish, at least ten days before closing, estoppel letters from the tenants stating the nature and duration of occupancy, rental rates, advance rent and security deposits. It is exactly the kind of detail that surfaces late and derails an entire closing.
Cash is a different calendar
Without financing, the application, the approval period, the appraisal and underwriting all disappear: nearly three weeks of the calendar. What remains is the inspection, title, the association and the signing, and closing can happen in two or three weeks. The contract acknowledges it in one detail: in a cash transaction, title evidence is delivered five days before closing instead of fifteen.
The timelines here are the form’s and common practice, not promises: every deal has its own rhythm and its own fine print, and this is general information, not legal advice. But the habit that separates a calm closing from a chaotic one does not change — read the contract’s calendar the same day it is signed, and write down every deadline with a name and an owner beside it. Deadlines do not warn you. The agent does.
