For a buyer, 2 to 5 percent of the purchase price, and the lender has to hand you a written estimate of every line of it within three business days of your application, which makes this the one cost in the transaction you can compare between lenders before you commit.
Escrow opens and a clock starts: earnest money goes in within days, inspections and the appraisal happen in the first two or three weeks, the lender underwrites, and every contingency has a date by which you either approve it or can walk with your deposit.
Thirty to 45 days from the accepted offer for a financed purchase, and one to two weeks for cash; the appraisal, underwriting and the mandatory three-business-day wait after the closing disclosure set the floor, and missing documents set the ceiling.
A general home inspection costs $300 to $600 for a typical single-family home, more for large or older houses, and takes two to four hours on site, with the written report arriving within a day; specialist inspections (sewer scope, pool, roof, termite) are $100 to $300 each on top.
Both sides pay their own: the buyer pays the loan costs, prepaid taxes and insurance and most title and escrow fees (two to five percent of the price), and the seller pays the commissions they agreed to, the transfer tax where custom puts it on them, and usually the buyer's owner's title policy, with the contract free to move any item.
The appraiser spends 30 minutes to an hour at the home and delivers the report to the lender in three to seven days, so the whole step usually takes one to two weeks from the order, and the report stays usable for months, with an update required once it is four months old on a conventional loan.
A title company searches the public records to confirm the seller owns the home free of undisclosed liens, insures the buyer and the lender against defects the search missed, and in most western states, Nevada included, also acts as the neutral escrow that holds the deposit, pays everyone at closing and records the transfer.
Visible, accessible defects that matter to safety or cost: the roof and its remaining life, the foundation and drainage, the electrical panel and wiring, plumbing and the water heater, heating and cooling and their age, windows and doors, attic insulation and ventilation, and any sign of water intrusion, each graded by how much it matters.
Yes. The deposit is credited back to the buyer on the settlement statement at closing, applied first against the down payment and then against closing costs, so it lowers the cash you wire on closing day dollar for dollar rather than adding to what the purchase costs.
It is the day the sale legally completes: the lender's money has funded, the deed and the new deed of trust have recorded with the county recorder, and escrow has disbursed the proceeds, which is why the signing appointment a day or two earlier is not the closing.
Thirty to 45 days from accepted offer to recording on a financed purchase, and one to three weeks on a cash one; the loan is the long pole, and the appraisal, the HOA resale package and the seller's disclosure are the three documents that most often move the date.
The buyer pays for the lender's policy, because the loan requires it; the owner's policy follows local custom, and in Nevada and Clark County the seller customarily pays for it, though the purchase agreement decides and every one of those lines is negotiable.
A one-time premium taken off the insurer's filed rate schedule and scaled to the purchase price for an owner's policy and the loan amount for a lender's, which on a typical home runs from several hundred dollars to a couple of thousand, with a simultaneous-issue discount when one company writes both.
The lender's policy is required on every mortgage and no lender waives it; the owner's policy is optional almost everywhere, and what it buys is cover for the defects a search cannot find, which is the whole of the tradeoff a cash buyer is weighing.
Two to three weeks is typical: the report goes to underwriting with the rest of the file, the conditions on the approval are cleared, the closing disclosure has to be in the buyer's hands three business days before signing, and funding and recording take a day or two after that.
The facts that let them compare a home to recent sales nearby: gross living area measured to a national standard, condition and quality on the report's rated scales, the room count, the lot, the permitted work, and on FHA and VA loans anything that fails the program's safety standards.
A full interior appraisal on a single-family home usually runs about $500 to $800 ordered through a lender, with national surveys putting the average lower and complex, rural, multi-unit, FHA and VA assignments higher; desktop and hybrid appraisals cost less, and an appraisal waiver costs nothing.
The buyer, in almost every financed purchase: it is a lender fee that appears on the loan estimate and is charged either to a card when the report is ordered or on the settlement statement at closing, and the buyer receives a copy by federal right even if the sale never closes.
A weak set of comparable sales, deferred maintenance, unpermitted or unfinished work, rooms that do not meet the definition of what they are called, and improvements the street will not pay for are what actually pull a value down; clutter, decor and paint color do not.
Whoever the purchase contract says: a seller-paid first year is a common concession and listing incentive where buyers have the leverage, a buyer buys their own where sellers do, some listing agents provide one as part of their service, and nothing outside the contract decides it.
A buyer in Nevada usually pays two to four percent of the price, so roughly $9,000 to $18,000 on a $450,000 house, and the seller's side runs higher because it carries the agent commissions, the real property transfer tax and, by Clark County custom, the buyer's owner's title policy.
In the everyday sense yes, because the commissions appear on the settlement statement and are paid out of the proceeds on the day everything else is paid; in the sense a lender means, no, because agent compensation is not a loan, title or prepaid cost and the closing disclosure gives it lines of its own.
An appraisal is an independent licensed opinion of what a property is worth on a stated date, written for the lender that ordered it, and built mostly by comparing the home to recent sales of similar homes nearby.
Work the county recorder's grantor-grantee index: find the current owner on the assessor's parcel record, pull the deed that conveyed the property to them, then walk backward one grantee at a time and search each owner's name for deeds of trust, liens, judgments and easements recorded while they held it.
An owner's policy insures the buyer's own interest in the property against defects in the ownership history that were already there on the day of closing, for one premium paid once, and it runs for as long as the buyer or their heirs hold an interest.
A loan policy insures the mortgage lender rather than the borrower, for the amount of the loan, against defects in the title that would attack the validity, enforceability or priority of its lien, and it ends when that loan is paid off.
Loss from things that were already wrong with the title on the day the policy was issued: forgery and impersonation in the chain of ownership, an undisclosed heir, a recording or indexing error, a lien the search missed, no legal right of access, and title that cannot be sold, plus the cost of defending against the claim.
An owner's policy has no expiry: it runs from the date of policy for as long as you hold an interest in the property, and afterwards for your heirs and for any warranty you gave the buyer, while a lender's policy lasts only as long as the loan it was written for.
Anything in the ownership record that stops a seller conveying clear title: an unreleased lien, a gap or error in the chain, a forged or improperly executed deed, an heir whose interest was never conveyed, or a legal description that does not match the ground.
A guide walks a whole process at length and is written about Nevada, because that is where Kouzr operates. A glossary term defines a word. These are the questions in between: national, answerable in a sentence, and worth the page it takes to say why the sentence is true. Where the honest answer needs figures, the figures are ours and the page says which market they are from. Nothing here is legal, tax or lending advice.
