The Utah buyer's guide
After your offer is accepted in Utah.
Your offer just got accepted. Now a set of clocks starts ticking, all of them written into the Utah contract you signed. In plain order: you deliver your earnest money, you inspect during the due-diligence window, your lender orders the appraisal and works your loan, everyone clears their deadlines, you do a final walkthrough, you sign at the title company, and the sale becomes real the moment it records at the county. Here is the whole thing in sequence, who does what at each step, and what can still end the deal along the way.
This is the under-contract-to-keys timeline. For what the contingencies themselves mean, see contingencies explained, and the full path lives on the buying-a-home hub.
On this page
What happens now
Your offer was accepted. Here is what happens, in order.
The moment the seller signs your offer, you are under contract, and a handful of deadlines you already agreed to start counting. The first is money: in Utah you deliver your earnest money deposit within four calendar days of acceptance, and it goes into a trust account, not to the seller. Next comes your due-diligence window, the stretch where you inspect the home, order any tests it needs, and decide whether to move forward, ask for repairs or a credit, or cancel and get that earnest money back. While you inspect, your lender goes to work: the loan gets ordered into processing, an appraisal is scheduled, and underwriting starts pulling the file apart to confirm the home and your finances both check out.
From there it is a march of deadlines. You clear the Due Diligence Deadline, then the Financing and Appraisal Deadline, then you head toward the Settlement Deadline. A few days before closing you lock your homeowners insurance and get a clear-to-close from the lender. You do a final walkthrough, you sit down at the title company and sign, you wire your funds, and then, in Utah, the deal is not actually finished until the documents record at the county. Recording is the finish line, not the signing table. A financed purchase commonly runs about 30 to 45 days from accepted offer to recording as of mid-2026, though cash deals can close much faster. The rest of this page walks that whole sequence, names who is responsible for each piece, and shows you exactly where a deal can still fall apart.
The timeline, day by day
From accepted offer to keys in your hand.
Here is the sequence for a typical financed purchase in Utah. Your exact dates come from the deadlines written into your Real Estate Purchase Contract, the REPC, so treat the day counts below as the common rhythm, not a promise.
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Day 0, you are under contract
Acceptance is the day both sides have signed and the final version has been delivered. That date sets every deadline that follows, so the first thing your agent and I do is write them all on a calendar and count backward from closing. The full buying path.
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Within four calendar days, earnest money is delivered
You send your earnest money deposit to the brokerage or title company holding it in trust. It is credited toward your purchase at closing. If it comes in late, the seller can issue a notice to cure, so this is not a deadline to be casual about. How earnest money works.
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The due-diligence window opens, and you inspect
Line up your own inspector immediately. A standard inspection is a visual look at the major systems, and on the right property you add radon, well, or septic tests, which take longer to schedule. This is also when you review the seller's disclosures. The home inspection.
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Your lender orders the appraisal and starts the loan
Give your lender everything the day you go under contract. The appraisal is ordered, and processing pulls your income, assets, and credit into underwriting. Do not change jobs, open new credit, or move large sums while this runs. Pre-approval explained.
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You resolve inspection items before the Due Diligence Deadline
If the inspection turns up something, you send the seller a written request for repairs, a price reduction, or a credit toward closing, and it carries its own short response deadline. If you cannot agree, you can cancel in writing before the deadline and recover your earnest money. Contingencies explained.
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The appraisal comes back, and you clear the Financing and Appraisal Deadline
If the home appraises at or above the price and your loan is on track, you pass this deadline and your financing contingency falls away. If the appraisal is low or the loan hits a wall, this is the deadline that protects your right to renegotiate or cancel.
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Underwriting clears the file, then clear-to-close
Underwriting may ask for a few last documents. Once satisfied, the lender issues a clear-to-close, meaning your loan is approved to fund. Around here you confirm your homeowners insurance is bound and effective on closing day. Closing costs.
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Final walkthrough, then you sign at settlement
Shortly before closing you walk the home one last time to confirm it is in the agreed condition and any repairs were done. Then you sit at the title company, sign your documents, and wire your down payment and closing funds.
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Recording, and the home is yours
After you sign, the lender funds the loan and the title company records the deed at the county recorder. Recording is the moment ownership legally transfers. That is when you get the keys, usually the same day or the next.
The REPC deadline ladder
The deadlines that run the deal.
The Utah REPC hangs the whole transaction on a short list of dates, all negotiated up front in the contract and all counted in calendar days. Weekends and holidays count against you, so the schedule is built backward from the closing date, not forward from today. Here is the ladder and what happens if a rung slips.
| Deadline | Typical window | Whose move | If it slips |
|---|---|---|---|
| Earnest money delivery | Within 4 calendar days of acceptance | Buyer | Seller can issue a notice to cure and cancel if it stays unpaid |
| Due Diligence Deadline | Around 14 calendar days, longer with well or septic | Buyer | Your clean right to cancel and recover earnest money over the condition ends |
| Financing and Appraisal Deadline | Commonly 7 to 21 calendar days | Buyer and lender | You lose the built-in right to cancel over financing or a low appraisal |
| Settlement Deadline | Commonly 30 to 45 days from acceptance | Buyer, seller, lender, title | The contract can go into default unless both sides extend it in writing |
| Recording | Same day as settlement or 1 to 2 days after | Title and county | You are not the legal owner and do not get keys until the deed records |
Who does what
Four sets of hands on the same deal.
Once you are under contract, four parties work the file at the same time, and knowing who owns which piece keeps you from waiting on the wrong person. You, the buyer, drive the decisions: you deliver earnest money, you schedule and pay for your inspection, you decide what to ask the seller for, and you bring your funds to closing. Your buyer's agent quarterbacks the contract side, tracking every deadline, sending and receiving the written notices and resolution forms, coordinating with the seller's agent, and setting up your final walkthrough. None of this happens on autopilot, and a missed date is almost always a communication gap, not a legal mystery.
Your lender owns the money and the property valuation from the financing side. They order the appraisal, run processing and underwriting, request documents, and ultimately issue the clear-to-close and fund the loan. The title and escrow company is the neutral party that makes the transfer real: they run a title search, prepare a title commitment, handle the escrow of funds, produce your closing figures, host the signing, and record the deed at the county. Utah is a title-and-escrow closing state, not an attorney-closing state, so you are not required to hire a lawyer to close, though you can bring one in for any question that is genuinely legal rather than procedural. The smoothest deals are the ones where all four parties are talking early and often, and part of my job is making sure that is happening.
Settlement vs. recording
In Utah, the deal is done at recording, not at signing.
This is the single point that surprises the most buyers, and it is worth slowing down on. Settlement is the signing appointment: you sit at the title company, you sign your loan and transfer documents, and you deliver your funds by wire or cashier's check. That is a big day, but it is not the day you own the home. Under the Utah REPC, settlement is only complete once both sides have signed everything and all required money has been delivered. Signing is your part of settlement, not the finish line.
After you sign, the file goes back to the lender to fund the loan. Once the title company has all the money in hand, it records the deed and related documents with the county recorder. Recording is the legal moment ownership transfers to you, and it is why you usually do not walk out of the signing with keys in your pocket. On a financed purchase, recording often happens the same afternoon or the next business day, once funding lands. This is also why a wire sent late in the day, or a lender who funds slowly, can push your keys to the following morning even though you signed on time. When people say a Utah deal closed, what they mean, precisely, is that it recorded. Plan your move-in around recording day, not signing day, and confirm with your agent and the title company when possession actually transfers, because that too is set by your contract.
What can still kill the deal
Where a deal actually falls apart.
An accepted offer is a strong start, not a guarantee. Most Utah deals that die do so at one of these points, and nearly all of them are tied to a deadline. Knowing where the risk sits is how you protect your earnest money and your timeline.
The inspection finds a real problem
A major roof, foundation, electrical, or plumbing finding can send you and the seller back to the table. If you cannot agree on repairs, a credit, or a price change before the Due Diligence Deadline, you can cancel in writing and recover your earnest money.
The appraisal comes in low
If the home appraises below the contract price, the loan will only cover the appraised value. You can ask the seller to lower the price, agree to pay the gap in cash, split the difference, or, protected by the Financing and Appraisal Deadline, cancel.
Financing falls through
A job change, a new debt, a big undocumented deposit, or a credit ding during underwriting can sink an approval that looked solid. Underwriting re-checks your file right up to funding, so keep everything frozen until the loan records.
A title or survey surprise
The title search can turn up a lien, an easement, or a boundary question that has to be cleared before the property can transfer. Most are resolved by the title company, but a stubborn one can delay or, rarely, end a deal.
The seller misses agreed repairs
If your final walkthrough shows repairs the seller agreed to were not done, you do not have to sign blind. Your agent can hold funds in escrow for the work, push settlement, or, depending on the terms, treat it as a breach.
A deadline gets missed
The quiet deal-killer. Let a deadline pass without acting and you can lose a cancellation right, or the whole contract can slide into default. This is exactly why the calendar goes up on day one and gets watched to the end.
The what-if scenarios
The edge cases, and how they usually play out.
Low appraisal is the most common curveball. Say a home is under contract at 500,000 dollars and it appraises at 485,000. Your lender will lend against 485,000, which leaves a 15,000 dollar gap. You have four real moves: ask the seller to drop the price to the appraised value, agree to bring the extra cash to cover the gap yourself, meet somewhere in the middle, or, using the protection of the Financing and Appraisal Deadline, cancel and recover your earnest money. Which one makes sense depends on how motivated the seller is, how much you want the home, and what your cash position looks like. As both an agent and a lender, this is a conversation I can run from both sides in one sitting.
Financing falling apart late is the scenario buyers fear most, and the fix is prevention. Underwriting is not a one-and-done approval. Lenders often re-pull credit and re-verify employment shortly before closing, so a new car loan, a fresh credit card, or switching jobs, even for more money, can undo an approval. The rule for the whole under-contract stretch is simple: no new debt, no big transfers you cannot document, no job changes, and answer every lender request the day it lands. If the loan genuinely cannot close through no fault of your own, the Financing and Appraisal Deadline is the contingency that protects your earnest money, which is one more reason to never waive it casually.
Then there are the timing problems, and Utah handles nearly all of them the same way: a written addendum both sides sign. If your inspection needs more time because a well test cannot be scheduled fast enough, if the appraisal is running behind, or if the loan needs a few extra days to fund, the deadline is not automatically extended just because everyone is being reasonable. Someone has to write an addendum moving the specific date, and both buyer and seller have to sign it. A verbal agreement to push a deadline is not worth much if the deal later sours. When the seller misses agreed-upon repairs, the walkthrough is your moment to push back: your agent can negotiate a credit, arrange to hold money in escrow until the work is finished, or delay settlement, rather than letting you sign for a home that is not in the condition you were promised. In every one of these cases, the pattern is the same. Utah gives you specific tools tied to specific deadlines, and using them in writing, on time, is what keeps you in control.
Working through it with me
One person who sees the contract and the loan.
The stretch between accepted offer and recording is where the contract side and the financing side have to move in step, and that is exactly the seam most buyers get tripped up on. I sit on both sides of it.
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Twenty years in Southern Utah. I have walked buyers through the under-contract stretch across Iron and Washington counties, and I know where Utah deals actually get stuck. I can tell you which deadline is the real risk this week and which one takes care of itself.
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Agent and lender, one picture. I am licensed in both. That means when the appraisal comes in low or underwriting asks a hard question, you are not relaying messages between two people who do not talk. I take one role on your deal and never both at once, but I can read the whole board.
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Deadlines watched, not assumed. I put every REPC date on a calendar the day you go under contract and count backward from recording. Nothing gets missed because everyone assumed someone else was tracking it.
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Statewide, told straight. In Southern Utah I am your agent. Anywhere else in Utah, I connect you with a vetted partner agent I trust in your area and stay involved through closing.
Questions, answered
What buyers ask after the offer is accepted.
For a financed purchase, commonly about 30 to 45 days from accepted offer to recording as of mid-2026, driven mostly by how long the loan takes to underwrite and fund. Cash purchases can close much faster because there is no lender timeline. Your exact target is the Settlement Deadline you negotiated in the Real Estate Purchase Contract, and it can be moved earlier or later by written agreement.
Delivering your earnest money. Under the standard Utah REPC you deliver the earnest money deposit within four calendar days of acceptance, and it goes into a trust account rather than to the seller directly. It is credited toward your purchase at closing. If it comes in late, the seller can issue a notice to cure, so it is worth handling right away.
The Due Diligence Deadline, by which you inspect and decide whether to proceed, cancel, or renegotiate; the Financing and Appraisal Deadline, which protects your right to cancel over financing or a low appraisal; and the Settlement Deadline, the date by which the signing and delivery of funds must happen. All three are negotiated up front and all run on calendar days.
When it records. Signing at the title company is your part of settlement, but under the REPC settlement is only complete once both sides have signed and all funds are delivered. Ownership legally transfers when the title company records the deed at the county recorder, which on a financed deal often happens the same day or the next. That is also usually when you get the keys.
No. Utah is a title-and-escrow closing state, so a title and escrow company handles the closing and you are not required to hire an attorney. You can still bring one in for any question that is genuinely legal rather than procedural, but the routine work of a purchase is handled by your agent, your lender, and the title company.
The most common points are an inspection that turns up a major problem, an appraisal that comes in below the price, financing that falls through in underwriting, a title or boundary issue, a seller who fails to complete agreed repairs, or a missed deadline. Nearly all of them are tied to a specific REPC deadline, which is why watching the calendar matters so much.
Yes, but only in writing. If the inspection, appraisal, or loan needs more time, the fix is an addendum that moves the specific date, signed by both buyer and seller. A deadline is not extended just because everyone is being reasonable about it, and a verbal understanding will not protect you if the deal later runs into trouble.
Keep exploring
Under contract and want the deadlines mapped for you?
I am Scott Buehler, and I have helped people across Southern Utah go from accepted offer to recording day without a deadline sneaking up on them. Send me your property and your accepted contract dates, and I will map the earnest money, due-diligence, financing, and settlement deadlines backward from closing so you always know the next move and who owns it. No cost, and no pressure.
Not in Southern Utah? I will connect you with a partner agent I trust in your area, and stay involved through closing.