Selling your home before buying a new one minimizes financial hazards. Even if you have to find temporary housing, it’s generally cheaper than paying two mortgages at the same time.  

• Get pre-approved for a loan to buy your new home.
• Until most of the contingencies have been met on the contract of your current home, wait to put an offer in on a new home. 
• If you’re ready to accept an offer on your current home, but haven’t found the right new home, we'll negotiate a "home of choice" contingency or a rent back to allow you to stay in your current home until you're ready to move into your new one. This will give you more time to look for the new home.

Buying First

It happens. You’re only thinking of buying and suddenly the right home shows up. I've seen it happen a number of times. Now you have to sell your old home quickly. Here are some things we'll consider to make things work in your favor:

• Negotiate a closing date longer than 30 days out and make it after we settle on your current home.
• Make the purchase contingent on your house selling. This works better in a slow/buyer's market, but it’s worth a try. You never know what may work best for the seller of your new home.
• Take a close look at what price you’re going to ask for your current home. Make sure it’s realistic.  Consider a slightly lower list price to bring lots of attention and a quicker sale.  With the additional buyer interest, it may actually end up driving your sales price higher than you hoped. 
• When we get an acceptable offer, I'll check the buyer’s credit history. We don’t want any surprises that are going to delay things. We want to make sure the buyer is well-qualified financially so that they can proceed to settlement without a problem.

Same Market or Across Country

Generally, if you’re buying and selling in the D.C. metropolitan area, we can more easily negotiate closing dates to work for you since we can travel to wherever closing is going to be for each transaction.  When you’re dealing with a cross country move, it can be a lot harder. A real estate professional really comes in handy at this point. I can take care of the details like sending documents to the settlement agents for your new home so your focus won’t be stretched to the limit.  With a full-time professional Realtor® on your side, it will hopefully be less stressful.

Show Me the Money

Make sure you have a tight hold on, and a clear understanding of, your financial situation efore embarking on this simultaneous buy/sell transaction.  Cash reserves are always helpful, but never more so than during the purchase of a home. Two to three months is the recommended reserve, but if you don’t have it, you may want to consider a home equity line of credit for what used to be known as a bridge loan.

Bottom line, you can buy and sell simultaneously, but it takes work and a lot of coordination.  It will likely be stressful and challenging, but it can be done.  I've helped a number of past clients do this very thing and can do the same for you.  Please contact me for an initial consultation.