Usually a couple of hours once the file is clear to close. A backed-up closing department can stretch it to a day, and a genuinely tangled file might take two. Where you are closing matters. In a wet-funding state like California, the money goes out with the loan documents, so the closer and the title or escrow company have to reconcile every fee exactly before you sign. The numbers need to be dead-on, because there is little room to correct anything after funds are released. In many other escrow states, small discrepancies can be trued up afterward without much impact on you, so getting the figures roughly right, on the order of ninety-eight percent, is enough to keep the file moving. The practical takeaway: clear to close does not mean you are signing that same minute, but the gap is normally short. If the balancing drags well past a day or two, it is fair to ask your lender and escrow officer where the holdup is.