honestly--how hard is it to sell your house and buy another one simultaneously??

Ugh. The thought of this makes me sick. We want to sell our house but don't know what town we want to move to.

With 2 little kids and a house full (and yard full) of stuff I don't even know where to start!

I don't want to put our house up for sale if we don't know where we want to go. And I don't want to look for houses if our house isn't even on the market. Anything I do find online, I don't really like so then I worry--what if we DO find buyers for our house, we don't know where to go!

What has everyone else done?? Please help me feel better about this! I almost just want to stay put to not have to deal with the stress.

Re: honestly--how hard is it to sell your house and buy another one simultaneously??

Unless you can afford to carry 2 homes -- and assuming you are getting a mortgage to purchase your new home, can get preapproved without having it being contingent on the sale of your current home -- you need to put your home on the market first.

You can casually look now, but you can't really put an offer on another house until your current house is in contract. Some sellers are hesitant to have any contingencies at all. But if your purchase of a new home is contingent on the sale of your existing home, you really need to be under contract on the sale of your current home before a seller will entertain your offer.

It is less than ideal, but most of my customers who are in this situation either (i) try to negotiate an extended closing date on the sale of their existing home to have more time to find a new home, but you still have a short window, or (ii) sell and then arrange to stay with relatives, do a short-term rental, or find some other alternative to bridge the gap between the sale of the current home and purchase of the new home.

I don't know what area you are in or where you are considering looking, but I am a full-time, active agent, and I am happy to help (even just to answer questions, give advice). Feel free to contact me via FM or directly at [email protected] or (516) 587-7618 (cell).

Re: honestly--how hard is it to sell your house and buy another one simultaneously??

This is the same situation my mom is in right now. She won't be taking out a mortgage on the new house since her current house is paid for, so she has to sell her house first in order to buy another.

My suggestion, start narrowing down the towns that you want to live in. That's something that you can do w/o really looking at specific properties and falling in love with a house. Get an idea of the area, school districts, proximity to work/familly/friends/parks etc. first.

Re: honestly--how hard is it to sell your house and buy another one simultaneously??

This is us.


My house is on the market, thats the first step.

Last time around we found our house, made an offer when into contract, then threw our house on the market and sold in a day. We closed on both houses within 1 day of eachother.

This is a different market.

Message edited 4/12/2012 3:04:44 PM.

Re: honestly--how hard is it to sell your house and buy another one simultaneously??

Re: honestly--how hard is it to sell your house and buy another one simultaneously??

we are about to start the same thing we have an area narrowed down, but not a specific school district...

Re: honestly--how hard is it to sell your house and buy another one simultaneously??

Last year we purchased a home, then put our coop on the market.we had double expenses for 2 months, then sold coop. We got lucky but i would never do that again!

Re: honestly--how hard is it to sell your house and buy another one simultaneously??

Pretty hard! I'm in a similar situation right now -- We had buyers for our house so we decided to put an offer on another. Our buyers backed out and now we're trying to figure out what to do about the house we love. Our lawyer won't let us sign contracts until we're in contract and we don't have buyers for our house yet! It's very stressful!!!!

Re: honestly--how hard is it to sell your house and buy another one simultaneously??

Honestly it made me too nervous to go to contract before we had a close date on the house we sold. what if we went to contract on a new house and something on the current house fell apart at the end (it happens) too scary for me. We went to contract on our new house the week we closed on the old. We lived with my dad for 4 months between waiting to close and doing consruction on the new house. Not ideal and a bit stressful with 3 kids but we got through it.

Re: honestly--how hard is it to sell your house and buy another one simultaneously??

We are in that situation. It's not easy. Although I haven't seen anything I like yet, it doesn't matter because I haven't found a buyer for my house either.

Re: honestly--how hard is it to sell your house and buy another one simultaneously??

We did it. Put your house up for sale first. I was nervous. But we got buyers. Now in contract with our new house...if all goes through.

Re: honestly--how hard is it to sell your house and buy another one simultaneously??

Re: honestly--how hard is it to sell your house and buy another one simultaneously??

We are planning to live with my parents, but I would like that time to be minimal.


Depending on the amount you have in equity, you could take out a HEL for the new down payment, but you would need a lot of equity to do that.

Re: honestly--how hard is it to sell your house and buy another one simultaneously??

It was a PITA. We made sure we sold first before we really buckled down and started to look. We got lucky and found a house within a few weeks of selling our place, and it took a month to close. Everything went into storage & we lived with my parents.

Re: honestly--how hard is it to sell your house and buy another one simultaneously??