Ask the REALTOR: Does the escrow company handle everything when I sell my home?

Ask the REALTOR® is a regular video series in which I answer your most commonly-asked real estate questions. If YOU have a real estate question that needs an answer, drop me a note here.

This week’s question: Does the escrow company handle everything when I sell my home? Here’s the answer in this brief video, and don’t miss the transcript below.

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Transcript:

Hi, this is Cari McGee with Keller Williams Realty, and welcome to this week’s episode of Ask the Realtor. This week, the question is…

“Cari, we’re about to close on the sale of our house. Does the escrow really take care of everything?”

For the most part. [laughs] There is one section that escrow does not take care of when they are divvying out the money to the interested parties. They do take care of the mortgage payment, anything left owing at the mortgage company — escrow makes sure that they get what they need to, and then they also make sure that the state and county, and everybody who taxes are owed to also gets their share that they need to have.

But the insurance company is not notified. They do pay up the insurance, but then they don’t tell the insurance that it’s done. And so that is your responsibility as the seller, to make sure that you turn off the insurance or you discontinue your insurance for that property. Otherwise, and usually it’s funny, because in about … I’ve had a couple clients in the last year say to me, “I thought the escrow company was taking care of the insurance, and now I have this bill for a house that I don’t live in anymore.”

So, just make sure that when you are selling your house, and if you’re moving to a new house and you’ve set up home insurance on the new house, make sure you also notify your insurer that the policy on the old house needs to be discontinued/cancelled because you don’t live there anymore.

Hope this helps! Hope you have a fantastic day. Thanks. Bye.