Let's say you don't try to figure things out while trying to make some deal, let's say you get the basics of RE before trying to deal in RE, the flow of transactions, how funds are accounted for in settlement, who is paying what to whom and why.

Any advice or thoughts of this settlement. 

The law firm that has been doing my settlements has been good to me, but I think they dropped the ball on this and I should recoup some of these costs on account of their lack of due diligence.

Once settlement is over I wanted to start purchasing 1-2 small apartments in the Philly area.While I’m looking on LoopNet.com on what’s out there I wanted to know if I should gather data from brokers on properties that I see to run the numbers to practice or should I wait?

Ultimately, the investor makes the decision based on their business model and tolerance for risk.Replacement Cost & Actual Cash Value loss settlement provisions and VERY importantly, how Co-Insurance affects your coverage are also two other pertinent things to consider when looking at coverage.One problem I will call out though is that so many of us are in such a hurry these days and professionals are less professional in many industries these days and are less about the relationship and more about churning numbers. 

ACH provides the ability to declare the effective date (first of the month, for example) and the settlement date, 1-2 business days later.  

For conventional financing, Amerisave is hard to beat, but their closing really sucks and they push you to use their own settlement company, which is questionably legal with respect to RESPA.

I'm going into settlement in a month for a new home we will be living in.

A double closing or simultaneous, as we use d them, is where the middle man acts as a buyer with the selling owner at a settlement, then the middle man acts as a seller to the end buyer, there is no assignment of a contract as deeds are conveyed to the middle man and immediately the middle man deeds to the buyer, it all happens during one settlement.The issue with these arrangements is now that the middle man has no money, the funds used were from the real buyer and pass through to the seller, that means that the middle man didn't give the consideration of his purchase price and technically didn't purchase. 

I believe it is important to find what the seller's base price is, and the balance of her mortgage (s) and other liens on the property and how fast she wants to get to the settlement table.