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Home >> Checks/Money Orders >> Checks You Received
About Funds Availability
I sold my apartment and received a certified check for some $300,000 as part payment, which I deposited with my bank, which now says that none of the money will be available until five business days after the deposit. I thought there was a federal rule that certain amounts had to be available earlier than the fifth day. Did this change? Both the issuing bank and my bank are in the same city. Second, isn't it normal practice for banks to submit large checks for electronic collection, bypassing the collection
process through the Fed for smaller checks?
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 Whether or not a check is presented electronically has no affect on the regulatory limit on holds on deposited checks. You said that the banks are in the same city. However, the location of the check-issuing branch office may not actually reflect the check processing region on which the check is drawn. For example, if the check is issued by a nation-wide large bank with a branch in your city on the east coast, the check itself could be drawn on the bank's home office across the country or at least outside the local check processing region.
If the check was actually certified, as you have stated, the first $5,000 of the check should have been available to you on the business day following the banking day you deposited it, unless your bank requires that a special deposit slip is needed in order to provide that next-day availability. If the bank requires a special slip and makes it available, but you failed to ask for it, the bank may not have known that the check was certified (it's computer system would certainly not have known), and the bank would be justified in treating the check as an ordinary check from the check processing region in question. Pulling all that together suggests that the bank may have determined the check was payable in another check processing region, treated it like an ordinary, rather than certified check, and made only the first $100 available to you on a next-day basis, holding the balance until the fifth business day following the day of deposit.
Published on BankingQuestions.com 12/10/08
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