Plan to wire your money for closing at least one full business day before your scheduled closing appointment, and verify the wiring instructions by phone before you send a dollar. Most title companies recommend a 24 to 48 hour buffer, and the Fedwire system that moves these funds only runs on banking days, closing to customer transfers at 6:45 PM Eastern.1Federal Reserve Bank Services. Wholesale Services Operating Hours The window is narrower than it looks once you account for your bank’s own cutoff, weekends, and holidays.
How Many Days Before Closing to Send the Wire
Aim for 24 to 48 hours ahead of your closing appointment. That buffer is not caution for its own sake. Roughly half the states have “good funds” laws that bar the title company from disbursing any money until your wire has fully cleared into their escrow account. Even in states without a specific statute, many title companies follow the same practice as a matter of policy. If your funds have not arrived and cleared by the time everyone sits down at the closing table, the transaction stalls.
The Fedwire Funds Service, which handles nearly all domestic closing wires, opens at 9:00 PM Eastern the night before each business day and stops processing customer transfers at 6:45 PM Eastern.1Federal Reserve Bank Services. Wholesale Services Operating Hours Most domestic wires arrive within a few hours of being sent, but “sent” and “received and cleared” are different milestones. Building in a day gives the receiving bank time to post the credit and gives your title company time to confirm it.
Bank Cutoffs, Weekends, and Holidays
Your bank’s internal cutoff will land earlier than the Fedwire deadline. Many banks stop accepting outgoing wire requests between 2:00 and 5:00 PM local time because they need time to review, approve, and transmit before the Fedwire window closes. Miss that internal cutoff by five minutes and the transfer rolls to the next business day.
Weekends and federal holidays are dead zones. Fedwire does not process transfers on Saturdays, Sundays, or any day the Federal Reserve observes as a holiday.1Federal Reserve Bank Services. Wholesale Services Operating Hours A Monday morning closing means Friday afternoon is already tight, and a three-day holiday weekend can create a four-day gap where no wire movement happens at all. Count backward on a calendar from your closing date and find the last real business day with enough margin.
Ask your bank two specific questions before you plan the wire: what time does the branch stop accepting outgoing wire requests, and does that cutoff differ between in-person and online submissions. The answers determine your real deadline.
Verify the Wiring Instructions Before You Send
Timing means nothing if the money goes to the wrong account. Real estate wire fraud is one of the most financially devastating scams operating today. In 2024, the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center recorded $2.77 billion in losses from business email compromise schemes, many of which targeted real estate transactions.2FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center. 2024 IC3 Annual Report Wire fraud specifically targeting real estate closings cost victims over $173 million in 2024. The pattern is almost always the same: a criminal compromises the email account of a real estate agent, title company employee, or lender, then sends the buyer altered wiring instructions routing funds to an account the criminal controls.
Before you initiate the transfer, do this:
- Call your escrow officer or title company at a phone number you already have from earlier in the transaction, not a number included in any email with the instructions. Confirm the bank name, routing number, and account number verbally.
- If you can pick up the wiring instructions at the title company’s office in person, do that. It eliminates the email vulnerability entirely.
- Treat any last-minute change to previously confirmed instructions as fraud until you verify otherwise through an independent channel. Legitimate title companies do not suddenly change their bank accounts days before closing.
- Watch for slight misspellings in email domains, urgent language pressuring you to wire immediately, and inconsistent formatting in the message.
The account number matters more than most buyers realize. Under federal regulations governing Fedwire, banks are allowed to rely on the account number alone to direct funds, even if the name on the transfer doesn’t match.3eCFR. 12 CFR Part 210 – Collection of Checks and Other Items by Federal Reserve Banks and Funds Transfers Through the Fedwire Funds Service and the FedNow Service (Regulation J) Transpose two digits and the money goes to the wrong account, with no obligation on the bank’s part to catch the mismatch. Read the numbers back to the teller, or triple-check them character by character if you’re entering them online.
Sending the Wire: In Person vs. Online
You have two options: visit your bank in person or use its online portal. For closing wires, in person is often the safer and more reliable choice. Many banks cap online wire transfers at $25,000 to $50,000 per day, and closing costs frequently exceed that threshold. Citibank, for example, limits standard online domestic wires to $50,000 per business day. If your closing requires more than your bank’s online limit, you will need to walk into a branch with a government-issued ID.
Expect the in-person process to take 30 to 60 minutes. The bank will have you fill out a wire authorization form using the details from your wiring instructions, verify your identity, and confirm the amount matches your available balance. Some banks require a secondary verification step, like a callback to a number on file, before releasing a large outgoing wire. Stay near your phone until you get confirmation the wire has been submitted.
Domestic outgoing wire fees typically run $25 to $30, though some banks charge up to $40. A few online-focused banks and brokerages charge nothing. The fee is usually deducted from your account separately, so factor it in when calculating what you have available. Financial institutions must also collect and retain detailed records for any wire transfer of $3,000 or more under federal anti-money-laundering rules, which is why you will be asked for identification and contact information even for straightforward transactions.4FFIEC BSA/AML InfoBase. Funds Transfers Recordkeeping
What Happens If the Wire Is Late or Goes Wrong
Late funds carry real financial consequences. The seller may charge per-diem fees to cover their ongoing mortgage, tax, and insurance costs for each day the closing is delayed. If the delay stretches far enough, the seller can treat the missed closing date as a breach of contract and potentially walk away from the deal entirely. Purchase agreements typically spell out exactly what happens when a closing date is missed, and the buyer who caused the delay has very little leverage.
A misdirected wire is worse, because wires are nearly impossible to reverse. The federal error-resolution rules that require your bank to investigate disputes and provisionally credit your account do not apply to wire transfers. Under the Uniform Commercial Code, which governs wire transfers in every state, a payment order generally cannot be canceled after the receiving bank has accepted it unless that bank agrees to the reversal.5Legal Information Institute (LII) at Cornell Law School. UCC 4A-211 – Cancellation and Amendment of Payment Order Before acceptance, you can cancel if the bank receives your request in time to act on it. After acceptance, you are asking the receiving bank for a favor it has no legal obligation to grant. If the money has already been withdrawn by a fraudster, there is nothing left to reverse.
The law also places the risk of misdirected payments squarely on the sender in most circumstances. If your bank followed commercially reasonable security procedures when processing your wire request, any loss from an unauthorized or misdirected transfer falls on you, not the bank. That is the opposite of how credit card fraud works, and it is why verification before sending matters far more than any attempt to fix things after.
If you do discover a misdirected wire, act within minutes. Contact your bank immediately and request a recall. The FBI’s Financial Fraud Kill Chain process can sometimes intercept funds before they are moved, but the window is narrow, and the realistic recovery rate drops sharply once even a few hours pass.
Confirming the Money Arrived
After the wire goes out, ask your bank for the Federal Reference Number, sometimes called the IMAD (Input Message Accountability Data) number. This alphanumeric code is assigned to every Fedwire transfer and serves as a unique tracking identifier. Send it to your escrow officer immediately so they can monitor the incoming credit on their end rather than waiting for it to appear on its own.
Your bank may confirm the wire left your account while the receiving bank is still processing the incoming credit. The confirmation that counts is the one from the title company saying the funds have arrived and cleared in their escrow account. Until you hear that, stay reachable by phone in case either bank has a question. Once the title company confirms receipt, the last obstacle to closing is out of the way.