What Happens Between Accepted Offer and Keys in Brentwood

The offer is accepted on a Tuesday. By Thursday the buyer has an email from escrow, a wire form, three dates circled on a contract, and no idea which of those dates can move. Most of the calls I get during escrow aren't really questions about real estate. They're questions about a process nobody ever walked the person through.

Who is holding my money during escrow?

A neutral third party is. In California, escrow is a licensed, independent office that takes instructions from both sides and can't act on one side's word alone. Your earnest money deposit doesn't go to the seller, and it doesn't go to me. It goes into a trust account that neither party can touch until the conditions in the contract are met.

This surprises people who bought their last home in another state, where an attorney often runs the closing.

Contingency dates are negotiated, not fixed by law

Contingency periods are the windows where a buyer can still walk away and keep their deposit. Typically there's one for inspections and investigations, one for the appraisal, and one for the loan. Each has a date, and each date is negotiated.

That last part is the piece almost nobody knows. Those day counts are blanks on the purchase agreement that the two sides fill in. In a competitive stretch buyers shorten them; on a house that's been sitting, you have room to ask for more. Whatever ends up written into your contract is the deadline that governs.

In California, a buyer generally has to remove contingencies actively and in writing. Letting a date slide by does not automatically remove them, and it does not automatically cancel the deal either. I calendar every one of these dates the day the contract is signed, and I remind my clients before the date, not after.

Which disclosures are specific to Brentwood?

Three local ones catch people who've bought elsewhere in California. This is the section a general Bay Area agent tends to miss.

Right to Farm. Brentwood Municipal Code section 8.01.060 requires a Right to Farm disclosure for property within 2,000 feet of agricultural land, delivered five days before title transfers. It tells you that tractors at 5 a.m., dust, and spraying are normal and permitted. Given how much of Brentwood sits against orchards and vineyards, this comes up constantly. I wrote about what that disclosure means earlier this summer.

Mello-Roos. Many Brentwood neighborhoods sit inside a community facilities district, and the assessment rides on your property tax bill. Which side of a district boundary a house sits on matters, and the boundaries don't follow subdivision lines the way you'd expect. The full breakdown is in my Mello-Roos post.

The HOA packet. If you're buying in Trilogy at the Vineyards or any other association, California requires a resale disclosure package, and assembling it takes time. Trilogy is sold out, so every sale there is a resale and every one of them needs this packet. I tell sellers to order it the day we list. More on what's inside it.

There's a statutory backstop worth knowing on all of these. Under California Civil Code section 1102.3, if a required disclosure, or a material amendment to one, is delivered after the offer is accepted, the buyer has three days after in-person delivery, or five days after delivery by mail or electronic record, to terminate the offer in writing. A late disclosure reopens a door the seller probably thought was closed.

When do I see the final numbers?

By federal law, your lender must deliver your Closing Disclosure at least three business days before closing. That's the form with your actual loan terms and your actual cash-to-close on it, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau requires the three-day window specifically so you have time to read it and ask questions.

If something material changes after it's issued, you get a new form and a new three-day clock. A last-minute credit, a changed loan amount, a corrected fee, any of them can restart it. This is the most common reason a closing slips by a few days, and it's usually nobody's fault.

Read that form against your original Loan Estimate line by line. If a number moved and you don't know why, call before you sign, not at the signing table.

Keys change hands on recording day, not signing day

Because signing isn't closing. In California, the sale is complete when the deed records with the county. For us that is the Contra Costa County Clerk-Recorder, at 555 Escobar Street in Martinez.

So the sequence at the end is: you sign, the loan funds, and then the deed records. Recording is what makes you the owner of record, and that's why keys change hands that day rather than at the notary appointment. If the county recorder is closed, nothing records, which is why a holiday can quietly push a closing.

One local scheduling note worth having: the Clerk-Recorder's office in Martinez is running extended hours on the first and third Thursday of each month, 8 a.m. to 6:30 p.m., through September 2026. Ordinary business hours are 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. weekdays. Also worth knowing on the money side — Contra Costa's documentary transfer tax runs $0.55 per $500 of value, and Brentwood, as a general law city, adds no city transfer tax of its own. That is not true everywhere in this county.

Why I warn every client about wire instructions

Because this is where escrows go badly wrong, and the numbers are getting worse. The FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center lays it out in its 2025 Internet Crime Report.

Real estate wire fraud, by the FBI's count

• 12,368 real estate fraud complaints logged nationally in 2025
• $275,110,419 in reported losses, up from $173,586,820 in 2024
• $123,671,936 of that came from complainants aged 60 and over, roughly 45 percent of the national total
• 2,473 complaints from the 60-and-over group, whose reported losses were $76,324,236 in 2024
• Source: FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center, 2025 Internet Crime Report

The part that concerns me most is that 60-and-over line. These are people wiring a down payment, following emailed instructions that looked exactly like the ones they were expecting.

My rule, and I don't make exceptions: never accept wire instructions by email. Call the escrow officer at the number you already have — not a number in the email — and confirm the account digit by digit before anything moves. If instructions change mid-escrow, treat that as fraud until proven otherwise. Escrow officers do not change wire instructions by email midstream.

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If you're staring at a contract right now, take a photo of the page with the dates on it and send it to me. I'll tell you which ones are real deadlines, which are negotiable, and what has to happen before each one.

(925) 200-0717 — I answer my own phone, seven days a week, and during escrow that matters more than at any other point in the deal.

This post is for general informational purposes only and is not legal or tax advice. Contingency periods, disclosure obligations, and Proposition 19 eligibility depend on the specific terms of your contract and your individual circumstances. Consult a licensed attorney or tax professional before acting on anything described here.

Margie Lupo, Broker Associate, SRES® · eXp Realty of Northern California, Inc. · DRE #01193496 · Brokerage DRE #02188495 · Equal Housing Opportunity

Sources

• Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, "When do I get a Closing Disclosure?" — last reviewed August 8, 2024. Accessed August 31, 2026.
• California Civil Code section 1102.3, California Legislative Information — amended by Stats. 2019, Ch. 310. Accessed August 31, 2026.
• Contra Costa County Clerk-Recorder, County Recorder Division and extended hours notice. Accessed August 31, 2026.
• Federal Bureau of Investigation, Internet Crime Complaint Center, 2025 Internet Crime Report — real estate crime type and complainants 60+ tables. Accessed August 31, 2026.
• Brentwood Municipal Code section 8.01.060, Right to Farm disclosure.