Real estate question (Long & rambly)

[honeybee503]

Has anyone put their house on the market while searching for a new one at the same time? H and I are considering it, but we are a little hesitant.

In order to have a full 20% down and do a traditional home loan, we would need to sell the house. Our current house will be paid off next year, but we would prefer to move earlier if we can because we are currently crunched for space. We are in a pretty good financial situation right now, we just need to sell the house to help with the down payment. My H will not budge on doing any other loan besides a traditional 20% down mortgage.

If you've listed your house while looking for a new home, how stressful was it? I'm expecting it to be pretty stressful. Did you sell or buy first? We couldn't deal with two mortgage payments for too long without it hurting us if we bought first. If we sold first, I am afraid we would be rushed to buy something or end up stuck staying at my parent's for a while, which I'd rather not do for more than a couple weeks if anything.

We do have the option of waiting until our house is paid off next year and then having a maybe less stressful experience, but H and I are both really longing to move. I know that a lot of people sell and look for a new home simultaneously, but I am just unsure of what to expect. Another option is putting a new doublewide on our land, but with the interest rate on those we would be paying close to the amount monthly of just buying a larger home elsewhere. We plan on talking to a realtor soon for more input but I wanted to see if any of you have done this!

TLDR summary: Have you tried to sell a house and buy a new one at the same time? What was your experience?

[carawestt]

Not me but my parents. They had their house on the market here while looking at houses in CO. The only stressful part was having to leave the house at the drop of a hat so the real estate agent could bring people in to look at it. They ended up selling 3 weeks before they moved. They only had to rent in CO for a month before buying a house.

[Deleted]

We did that when we moved here to CO. We listed our home in KS and waited until we had an offer. A week later we got an asking price offer so we accepted it. We then had to close in 6 weeks so we ran out to CO and bought a house in a day. We closed on our house in KS on a Friday and closed on our house in CO 3 days later on a Monday.

We ended up loving the house we purchased here in CO. The main downside to what we did is you don't get to spend months finding the perfect house to put an offer in on.

Another option is some people will accept an offer contingent on selling the previous house. When we moved they weren't doing that here because the market is so hot the sellers didn't want to wait around.

[teamhayes]

You can put. Contingency in the selling agreement that you won't close til you close on your new house if you sell before you buy

[spaghetticat]

We did last year when I was pregnant. We sold our house first and then bought the one we are in now. There was a month in between where we had to live with my parents. I do not recommend that method.

[devotchka]

We just bought a home from a family that was trying to sell and buy at the same time. They told us they were initially trying to do it all at once - so they put in an offer right after we put in our offer and that got accepted. They didn't want to put in a contingency for their home to sell because the market here is competitive and it might mean that you might not get your offer accepted over someone else's :/ So I think it just really depends on your market. What does your agent say? Personally I think we will try to sell first when the time comes, although I don't think we're going anywhere for about a decade... 

[tennisgal]

We ended up buying a new house and moving to that house, then doing some upgrades to the old house before putting it on the market. It was really stressful. We paid 2 mortgages for 6-7mos. The old house was on the market for about 4 mos (which I realize isn't that bad considering that we listed it Jan 1st) I just didn't think that I'd be able to keep the house clean enough to be on the market while we were living there - with a toddler and dog. I know, people do it all the time. The houses that we were looking at were going sooooo quickly, that we were worried that if we sold first, that we wouldn't be able to get into a new house that we liked with the way the market was going. It worked out ok for us the way we did it - but we were stretched pretty thin for those months.

Good luck!

[Deleted]

Mar 4, 2015 16:55:11 GMT -5 tennisgal said:

We ended up buying a new house and moving to that house, then doing some upgrades to the old house before putting it on the market. It was really stressful. We paid 2 mortgages for 6-7mos. The old house was on the market for about 4 mos (which I realize isn't that bad considering that we listed it Jan 1st) I just didn't think that I'd be able to keep the house clean enough to be on the market while we were living there - with a toddler and dog. I know, people do it all the time. The houses that we were looking at were going sooooo quickly, that we were worried that if we sold first, that we wouldn't be able to get into a new house that we liked with the way the market was going. It worked out ok for us the way we did it - but we were stretched pretty thin for those months.

Good luck!

That is exactly what we plan to do when we sell our house. We have very dark wood floors and with several pets and a toddler, and soon a baby too, there is just no way I could keep up and my sanity.

[Deleted]

Oh and we got a "normal" loan without 20% down. We do have PMI but it goes away once we hit 20% down so it isn't a huge deal.

[honeybee503]

Yeah, my H really doesn't want to pay PMI. :/ We plan on meeting with a realtor soon to discuss all of the specifics. That is good to know about the contingency!

[shevacc]

We did this, sort of, when we moved to Seattle. It was definitely stressful, but I feel like buying a house is always stressful bc someone (usually the lender) is always playing games at the last minute and telling you that they may have to delay closing for XYZ reason.

We listed our house on the market the end of April, it sold in 2 weeks, then closing was set for 6ish weeks after that (July 8th). Once we were under contract, I started seriously looking for a new house for us. At the time there was enough inventory out there that I felt like I could find a place that met our needs. I did most of my research on Redfin/Zillow, then saw a number of houses with a realtor over several days. We found the one we liked and went through the offer process, setting closing to be July 13th. We love our house and it worked out well for us.

One thing that helped us was that we found a month-to-month rental for that time. Mainly that was due to moving cross-country and me having to start my new job. You guys have your parents to fall back on if everything gets all screwed up...we had this rental just in case. That eased a lot of stress since worst case we could've stayed longer in our rental in between. Maybe something to consider if living with your parents won't work out?

I think you can do a lot of your own research to see how many houses that meet your needs/budget are currently on the market. If they're few and far between, then maybe you need to jump on the first one that comes up but if there are several, I'd try to sell first to reduce your stress levels. Realtors don't have your own best interest in mind -- they want to sell houses to make themselves money.

One final gotcha we narrowly avoided -- make sure the "proceeds of sale" are available fast enough if you sell then buy in two closings close together. We narrowly made it for ours...there was something about holding the funds for 48 business hours that almost delayed our closing date to buy our current house.

[dixeedeluxe]

We sold our house quickly before finding something new. We've been in this month to month rental since July 2013.

[Regina Philange]

We bought and sold and had Louie all in the same week. It was hectic and yeah very crazy.

But it is what it is!

[dixeedeluxe]

Our realtor also advises against a contingency because we'd get passed over.

[dixeedeluxe]

The market wasn't competitive but our neighborhood wasn't desirable.

[dixeedeluxe]

We didn't look at houses with contingencies because it prevented us from submitting other contracts. Not that we found a house anyway!

[dojo]

We have always sold first then bought. You can find temp housing if you need it while you look / wait to close, but two mortgages are always two mortgages if you buy before selling

[dixeedeluxe]

Renting hasn't been bad at all. We have a lot of stuff still packed up so it'll be ready to go. We are month to month so there is no pressure.