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My broker requires we do a buyer walk thru with our clients no earlier than 24 hrs before closing, and ideally on the way to closing. Too much could happen, like a broken pipe, someone vandalizing property, or likevone of the sellers, seller removing a built in oven. (Yes, the seller actually did that!). On a deal last mo, i had written into contract that seller would remove old furniture that was left in harage and family rm...on our walk thru the morning of closing, it was still there. We refused to close until it was gone. Listing agent went out there and removed it, so we closed. Had we not donecwalk thru, buyer would have been stuck paying someone to haul off.
You are a good buyer agent. My last two did not even mention about this option. As a matter of fact, I once asked him to go into the house pending to measure furniture and he said no.
That's unfortunate. I do not feel like getting my buyers into a property during their due diligence period to.....do their due diligence....is in any way a "BTCOD" thing. Should be a given. Ideally measurements for furniture/etc happen during an inspection so that's usually my recommendation.
I think it is downright irresponsible to not schedule a final-walkthrough for buyers as close to closing time as possible. A lot can happen before closing!
As it turned out...NEITHER sets of buyers on my two listings that closed today ended up doing a final walkthough. Good for my seller's....damn shame for those buyers if something had broken/been amiss before they closed and they didn't know.
Last August during a final walk-through we noticed that the AC was not cooling and it was 82 degrees in the house (only 3 year old house/HVAC unit). Even though we had a home warranty in place....guess whose responsibility it was to make sure the coil was replaced before we closed...and guess whose it would have been had we closed without noticing that!?
This just jarred a memory from my childhood, when my folks were closing on the house I grew up in.
I was too young to be aware of the issues at the time, but I grew up hearing this story!
The sellers wanted to take the refrigerator with them.
My parents wanted the refrigerator to stay.
The reason? It was custom painted.... tole painting style... the frig and the oven and the dishwasher all matched. I know this sounds atrocious for many here, and it probably was... but it was the 70s, and it was my parents, and it did look really cool the way it was done.
It all came down to my dad sitting there around the table in the house with our agent and their agent, saying: "The frig has to stay! It matches the oven!"
The sellers very reluctantly agreed to leave the frig. But when we walked in the house after close.... the frig was there but the oven was gone.
No, I don't know exactly how the contract read... only the legend.
I would never buy a house without doing a final walk thru- my last purchase the seller kept trying to get me to close before they moved out- give them an extra day was what they kept saying. I refused, was very flexible on the closing date if they needed more time. Well, on the day of closing I went for the final walk thru and they were still getting some final things out but discovered they had removed all the window covering mountings and attempted to remove some other attached items out of the house. I did not make a stink about the window mountings as I had planned on replacing with shutters anyway but it all made sense why they wanted to close before fully moving out- I wonder what else they would have removed??? Once you close it is your property, if the seller damages or takes items then you have to go thru the court system.
Final walk thru is necessary for multiple reasons but sometimes you're dealing with sleazy sellers.
When I bought my 2 houses in the last decade, my agent never told me to do final walk-thru before escrow work done. Now I am selling my house and it IS THE THING.
So is it something just pops up recent years? Is it something the buyer agent offers ONLY when being asked?
What is the risk for the seller if things falling apart on that day?
I've never heard of *not* doing a final walk-through just before heading to the closing. In fact, I was in my current house multiple times before the escrow work was done. (Easy enough to have done because the house was unoccupied at the time.)
As for risks to the seller, the sale was nearly cancelled due to some minor things that the buyers of our house wanted (they deciding mere hours before the closing that the mulch and bushes were too close to the foundation, etc. No matter that the house had been contingent for over a month and they'd done multiple inspections and walk-throughs prior to closing day. ) They waited until all of our things were on the truck and we were in the process of broom-sweeping the house for them.
It took threatening to write them a check for the earnest money right then and there to get things resolved and head to the closing table. Realtor said that it was the worst closing that she'd ever had.
We just closed on our house last week Wednesday. We did a walk-through 30 mins before our closing appointment.
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) They waited until all of our things were on the truck and we were in the process of broom-sweeping the house for them. 
