How to Sell Your Home While Buying Another Home
Hi, Kevin Yoder here with Yoder Real Estate, powered by EXP. Today, I’m going to answer a question for you that a lot of sellers are asking me, which is, “How can I sell my home today in this crazy market and buy another one?” So, it’s the sell Home A to buy Home B, scenario. And while it may be easier for folks that are renting right now, what about you? What about the home seller that has a home to sell? There’s a lot of folks out there that would like to make a move sideways, either moving up or moving down, upgrading, downsizing, or whatever that situation is, but they can’t, or they feel like they can’t. Today I’m going to give you three and a half ways that you actually can. Actually, I’m going to give you three ways, and then one thing that’s not working right now.
Okay, let’s get into it. The tip of the day is, number one, get your financing in order. Make sure you get a pre-approval letter with a lender that clearly, clearly states that you are qualified, you are pre-approved, and you’re ready to go. Pre-approval is better than pre-qualification. If it can say pre-approved on there, that’s even better. If you need a solid lender, please reach out to me. We have a preferred lender we work with that gets our sellers into the financing situation that makes it a solid offer when they’re going to buy.
Second part of that. This is kind of a 1.5 part is, find out if you are a seller who can have a pre-approval letter that states that you can own two homes simultaneously. Now, this is not as risky as it may seem. This is a matter of finding out if you are able to. That way, if you need to, you can do it.
Remember, if you have to carry two mortgages, it’ll be for a very short period of time, usually for a couple of weeks. And maybe you can avoid making that second payment or having two payments altogether because your home is going to sell rather quickly. That’s Home A will sell quickly, so you don’t have to carry two payments for a long time. If you do, it’ll be for a very short period, maybe one month or two months at the most. And that’s highly unlikely it’ll go that long. Okay. Financing is number one. Get it into order.
Now before you sell your home, it is advisable to focus on those low cost, high return items
Number two, consider alternative housing. What do I mean by that? This is something that many folks are considering now, whereas in the past, it wasn’t very common, but now given what’s going on with the market, find yourself a rental situation if you can. If you don’t have a lot of animals, it makes it a lot easier. If you can find a short-term rental situation, 60, 90 days, or four months, which means you can sell Home A for maximum dollar. Do so with relatively little stress and anxiety on that part. And then live in a rental situation for a few months while you’re looking for the right home. This will really relieve a lot of pressure for you, and you’ll be able to find that right place rather than feeling like you’re really settling for the next place, and no one wants to do that. Consider that, there are a few options out there. Do you have someone, a friend or a family member that has a vacation home that they’re not using right now? Maybe you can stay there for a few months and help ease the pressure for you.
Okay, number three is you can accept an offer on Home A, the home you’re living in now, that is contingent upon you finding another one. That’s right. We’ve done it for our sellers many times where you have your home you don’t really want to list because you haven’t found that next place yet. We’ll put your home on the market with a contingency that clearly states that you will only accept offers that will allow you a period of time, two weeks, three weeks, sometimes up to a month, for you to find the next home, or this offer becomes null and void. We’ve done this a lot for our sellers.
Let me give you 3.5. 3.5, 0.5 part of this is something that’s not working right now. So speaking of contingencies, while the contingency can work this way on what you can do when you’re finding a place, but as far as writing an offer, that’s contingent upon the sale of your home, that’s really not working right now. And the reason is because there’s too many competing offers, that your offer will just simply will not rise to the challenge. The prices will be higher than what you could offer, and they’re lacking contingencies. We have cash offers, over list price, sometimes $20,000, $30,000 or more in some markets, $200,000 over. In our market, not so much. At the same time, remember contingent offers are definitely a thing of the past, at least now in today’s market.
I hope that these three and a half tips have served you today. If you want to know more, how to navigate from Home A to Home B, we’re doing it every day here Yoder Real Estate. In fact, we do it hundreds of times each year, and we can do the same thing for you if you’re interested in knowing how to sell your home for the most money, in the shortest amount of time, with the least amount of hassle, hey, that’s what we do best. Reach out to us at yoderrealestate.com of course, online at yodarealestate.com and we look forward to connecting with you soon.
Asking yourself “what is the value of my home” in today’s market?
Check out our Free Online Home Price Estimation Tool.
Call me at (616) 942-2449 for a FREE home buying or selling consultation