After your mortgage has been approved, your signed contract accepted, and its contingencies met, you will be notified of the date of settlement — that is, when the transfer of title to your new home takes place. Procedures vary; in some regions of the country, notably the Northeast, the closing might be a lawyer's office, where the room is crowded with people — the sellers and their attorney, the buyers and their attorney, the lender's attorney, and the selling real-estate agent. In contrast, the scene of a settlement on the West Coast might be a small office with one person working alone — an escrow agent. No one else need come, and no one does.

Between those poles are many possible closing scenarios. Depending on local custom, settlement may be conducted by an escrow agent, a lending institution, a title insurance company, a real-estate broker, or attorneys for the buyers or sellers. Even the wording of the settlement/closing procedures will differ from one area of the country to another since terminology, like procedure, is a matter of local custom.

There is one stabilizer, however. In response to buyer and seller confusion over the diversity of closing procedures across the country, and in response to the prevalence of some unethical practices and paybacks, the federal government stepped into this area of real estate in 1974 by enacting the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act (RESPA). That law governs most of the steps in the transfer of property and protects the homebuyer with its disclosure requirements. Thus, you can anticipate no unpleasant surprises!

RESPA assures that you will know fairly accurately what services you will be charged for, although you may not know the amount of the fees. Essentially, though, at a closing, a sizable number of papers are shifted from one party to another for signature. And you pay a fairly sizable number of costs.

Keep in mind that unless everything is paid at the closing, the property does not change hands. You cannot earnestly plead, “I'll get that check to you as soon as I get paid Thursday.” No payments, no house.

Following is a common closing protocol, assuming you will take part in the closing. As soon as it is possible to do so, your lawyer's secretary calls and tells you what your closing expenses will be. If that does not happen, call and ask. If you do not have a lawyer, your mortgage lender will apprise you of settlement costs.

The secretary will give you a specific figure and ask you to bring in a cashier's check for that amount, made out to the lawyer. You pay the lawyer for all the expected charges, and using your money, she makes disbursements. That is practical, because the money will be paid out in so many different directions. Also, bills for various services needed for the closing will be sent to your lawyer for payment by you at the closing. It would be wise to keep several hundred dollars in your checking account, though, to bring along in the unlikely event something else pops up.