Postal Letter

My deposit check to the title company for my house was sent to the wrong place by USPS! Will we close late?

We JUST went into contract on the 29th, my BF mailed out deposit check to the title company certified mail that afternoon (we have 3 days). Today he checked the status online and it says it was undeliverable in VERMONT! We live in CA and our title company is in CA too. The zip code that USPS put in was off by 1 number 05747 instead of 95747. We called USPS to see if they had read the envelope and realized they routed it wrong but their system is down!? Title Company says we will be fine as long as we have the postmarked certified receipt for a date within out time limit. We do. My question is will our closing date be delayed because of the post offices mistake? We don't know if the check is being routed to the printed address (the correct one) for delivery or coming back to us, either way it wont arrive for a couple days. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks! We are only doing 3.5% down anyways, 3% now and .5% due at closing. It is the 3% check that was sent out. FHA loan. Were not closing for a long time, were still under our contingency period! Sorry, I am not going to drive 3 hours one way to hand deliver my deposit check. We figured certified was good enough. The error is USPS, we printed our envelope with a printer, somehow the postal worker entered the wrong zip for whatever routing info they do when you mail certified at the post office.

Public Comments

1. if not there in time yes you will close late
2. Next time write more legibly. Yes, you will be late if they don't get the check in time. Why did you mail a check instead of physically bringing a cashier's check to closing or doing a bank wire?
3. The property will not close without all of the paperwork signed and the money resolved. If this is your full down payment then the deal won't close without it. However, it would be normal and customary for you to bring that payment to the closing with you. If this is merely a small deposit as a show of good faith they you might want to write another check and send it to the right address immediately. If is a cashier's check or the like, ask the bank if they will allow you to re-deposit it into your account once it has been returned. Or ask them to cancel it and to cut you another check. The worst that they can do is say "No". The larger the amount, the more likely the bank is to reject your request. If the title company is not worried that may be a good sign or they may be overly optimistic. From your comments above I would assume that it is a token amount meant to show good faith. Often the lender will move ahead with the closing if you pay that amount at closing (even if they did not get it ahead of time).