How long buying a home actually takes

How long does it take to buy a house?

Buying a home in San Diego County runs on two clocks. Searching takes as long as it takes — commonly a couple of months, sometimes a weekend, sometimes a year — and the part that is actually predictable is what follows an accepted offer: about thirty to forty-five days to close with a mortgage, or one to two weeks in cash.

Almost everything written about this quotes an average that blends the two, which is why the answers vary so wildly. The half you control is the preparation: a buyer who is fully preapproved before they start looking can write on the day they find the house, and a buyer who is not will lose one they wanted while assembling paperwork.

How long does mortgage preapproval take?

Preapproval for a San Diego County purchase takes anywhere from a day to a week, depending almost entirely on how quickly the buyer returns documents rather than on the lender. Straightforward salaried income with two years of the usual paperwork is fast; self-employment, recent job changes and gift funds all add days.

Preapproval is not prequalification, and the difference matters when an offer is competing. A prequalification is an estimate from what a buyer said about themselves; a preapproval means a lender has actually verified income, assets and credit. Sellers and their agents read the difference immediately.

Get it before touring rather than after. Since August 2024 a buyer must sign a written agreement with their agent before seeing a home anyway, so the paperwork stage now sits at the very start of the process rather than in the middle of it.

How long is escrow when buying a home in California?

Escrow on a financed San Diego County purchase generally runs thirty to forty-five days, and its shape is set by the contract rather than by the escrow company: California's standard agreement gives the buyer seventeen days to investigate, seventeen for the appraisal and twenty-one for loan approval, all counted from acceptance.

Those periods are the buyer's protection and they are negotiable in both directions. Shortening them makes an offer more competitive and is often what wins a house against a higher bid; it also shortens the window in which the buyer can withdraw and keep their deposit, so it is a real trade rather than a free concession.

Jumbo financing runs longer, which affects a great deal of this county. So does anything unusual in title, and anything that has to be assumed — a solar lease being the one buyers most often meet, covered in what the paperwork behind the panels actually says.

What slows down buying a house?

The delays that actually cost San Diego County buyers time are documents returned slowly to the lender, an appraisal that comes in under the contract price, title problems on the seller's side, and repair negotiations that reopen after the inspection.

Only the first is fully within a buyer's control, and it is also the most common. Underwriting works in rounds: each request answered within hours keeps the file moving, and each one that sits for two days adds two days to the close.

A low appraisal is the one worth planning for in advance, because it forces a decision rather than a delay — renegotiate the price, cover the gap in cash, or withdraw under the appraisal contingency while it is still in place.