Prior to a month ago, lots of people would attend each real estate closing, such as:

But these days, it doesn't work so well to have a closing with 5 to 10 people present -- especially when a title company might have 8 to 12 closings per day.  That title company would then potentially have 75+ people walking in and out of their office each day, in addition to the 10-ish people working in the office.

So, things happen a little differently now...

Basically, each party (buyer and seller) drives to the title company, picks up the closing documents from a box outside the front door of the title company, calls the closing attorney to review the documents by phone, and then signs the documents in their vehicle.  Once the documents are signed, they are put back in the box and the closing attorney takes the documents into the office to review them and then let's the buyer or seller know that they can leave. 

This new process (utilized by multiple local title agencies) is still allowing real estate closings to happen, but it certainly is a tad bit less exciting than it used to be.  There is (necessarily) quite a bit less personal interaction with this new process and some of the joy of a home purchase (or sale) isn't quite the same at that particular moment of the transaction.