If you currently own a house and are planning to buy a new one this year, are you curious how that process works? In this episode of Naturally NWA, I’m going to show you how to buy a new home and sell your existing one at the same time. I’ll show you why timing is crucial in this type of tricky transaction to avoid being temporarily homeless.

The Importance Of Timing

If you’re buying and selling at the same time, it’s important that you plan carefully. If you do, it can save you thousands. When you don't plan, you can find yourself in between closings, which means you’ll be temporarily homeless. And being homeless means a whole lot of stress. 

When you’re buying and selling a house at the same time, there are a lot of moving parts—and some might be contingent upon another. To stay out of trouble, the most crucial thing is timing. Timing yourself and your purchase at the same time is the key to doing this successfully.

The first question you want to ask yourself is whether you need to sell your house before you can obtain financing to purchase your next home. If the answer is no, the transaction can be timed in many different ways based on your overall goals. Your agent can walk you through the methods to make this happen, but you're still going to want to time it as well as you can.

Ideally, you'd sell your house within 30 or 45 days of closing on your new one. If you do need to sell to buy, however, that's when it becomes more challenging. 

Getting A Buyer

To ensure a seamless transaction, it all comes down to timing the moving parts. In a perfect situation, you do not want to be under contract on a new home purchase until after you have received an offer on your existing home for sale. You'll need to time it so that you can sell your home earlier in the day before you close on your next home. This is going to allow the debt to clear on your name so you can take out another mortgage.

Another reason this is important is that you will have more purchasing power. You’ll be able to make a non-contingent offer when you attempt to buy your next home. If your home is not under contract yet, that makes you a weaker offer in the eyes of a seller. But if your home is already under contract, a seller is more likely to accept your offer. 

The best way to do this is to loosely start looking for a new home while your existing home is listed. If you start to feel like your home is getting a lot of activity and could get an offer soon, you'd probably want to get a little bit more aggressive on your home search. In a perfect world, you'd want to get an offer accepted on your house before you go and make an offer on a new house.

Closing The Deal

The contract date on the sale of your house would be lined up to be before the purchase of your new home. While this is how this would work in general, everyone is going to be in a little bit of a different situation. This type of transaction needs planning and strategy to do it with the least amount of headache possible. The good news is that I do this all the time—and I'd be happy to help you.

I really hope this showed you the importance of timing in this type of transaction and why getting the proper representation is key. Of course, there are many specifics and details that I didn't cover. I’d be happy to answer any further questions you have and tailor an exact plan for you. I help people just like you buy and sell property simultaneously every day, and I would be happy to assist you.

So if you're looking for any additional information or have specific questions, please feel free to message me, give me a call, or send me an email. Don't forget to subscribe to our channel so you never miss an episode of Naturally NWA!