Florida USDA Turn Times

What are Florida USDA Turn Times?

Florida USDA turn times are important to know as you go through the process of shopping and getting your home under contract to purchase. Likewise when you are nearing your closing date it can become even more important. When using a mortgage bank approved as a lender for the Guaranteed USDA program, once your file has cleared underwriting, the USDA approved underwriter will then send the file to the USDA for review.

This can take anywhere from 1 to 15 days. So when you are shopping for your home and you are trying to decide how many days are needed to close, knowing the current turn times is important.

For this reason its typical to get 45 days on a USDA contract, knowing that even when you start the underwriting process and the current turn times are 3 days, they could easily go to 7 or 10 days by the time your file is ready for the USDA. It all depends on how busy the rural development department gets. Florida used to use their local USDA offices to review local files, with each of those offices having different turn times. That changed about 2 years ago when the USDA department in Florida created a single ques for all Florida USDA files.

They also created a hot line so that anyone can call and hear what current range of dates the USDA is working on. That number is 352-338-3421. If you are a real estate agent, you should have that number saved in your phone!

Its important to note that you can ask your lender for confirmation of when your file has been sent to the USDA. You should not be left in the dark just hoping that your file has been sent to the USDA if you are concerned about turn times or whether your lender is being truthful. Additionally when their is concern from any party, real estate agent, or seller, the hotline is a great way to provide transparency and confirmation as to exactly what is happening with your file. They will tell you the range of submission dates they are currently working on. This becomes especially more important in the event there was delays with getting your file to the USDA for whatever reason. In times past it seemed that lenders would take advantage of this extra window of time needed for the USDA, and simply blame the USDA for any delays. It really doesn’t need to be the case, the USDA turn times are there for everyone to listen to, and every underwriter gets confirmation of when the file has been received by the USDA.