How to Sell Your Home and Buy the Next One in One Move

Hey, it’s Dave Knight with the Dave Knight Real Estate Team, and we love being a real estate resource to people. You find the next house. You still own the current one. And suddenly you’re facing a question with no clean answer: which one do you do first?

I had two cases recently where a couple was in exactly that spot. Here’s how we handled them.

Can you take us back to the moment you first heard about this situation? What was going on?

Two cases recently, both couples, both wanting to sell their current house and buy another property. The challenge is always the same: how do you sell one place and move into the next without some kind of transition in between?

If you have the cash to buy the new place before you sell, that’s easier. If you can get a loan to buy before you sell, that’s another possibility. But when you do that, you don’t exactly know how much your current place is going to sell for. So there’s a little bit of uncertainty in it.

What was at risk for your client if this didn’t get resolved? What were they facing?

The challenge of selling is that you eventually lose that house. You have to move out of it when it sells, at the change of possession. So you’ve either already purchased another property, or you’re figuring out short-term housing.

A lot of times people move in with family members, especially if the new house isn’t fully ready and there’s work to do on it first. Sometimes it’s an apartment, sometimes it’s another house for a short term. Those are real options, and there’s nothing wrong with them. But they’re moves you’d rather not make.

Walk us through what you did. What was your first move, and how did you start turning things around?

We went to market with their current residence and received multiple offers in both cases. That matters for more than price. Multiple offers give you room to negotiate terms, and terms are where this whole thing gets solved.

We ended up accepting an offer that gave us rent back, which bought about a 60-day runway to find their replacement property. We had options for getting out of the contract or finding transitional housing if we needed them. But in both cases, we took the timeline of the sale and the closing and made it so the purchase closed immediately after the current place did.

Tell us about the moment it all came together. What happened, and what was your client’s reaction?

They stayed as tenants in their old residence, closed on the new place, became the owners, took their keys, and moved all their personal property into the new house. One move.

That’s the easiest way to do it, because every time you’re moving, it’s a headache. It’s a lot of stress. Being able to go from one place to the next without transitional housing, and in these cases without contingencies on either the sale or the purchase, is the best way. You’re selling for maximum value, and you’re purchasing at the best price.

Was there a moment where you thought this might not work out? What was the biggest wall you had to get through?

There are so many different variables. If the sale gets delayed, and that can happen for any number of reasons, all of a sudden, the purchase gets delayed too, because the money is held up in the sale.

When things get shaky, we become emotional caretakers, absorbing a lot of the chaos of people’s emotions. And there can be so many people involved. If there’s another transaction on the other side, it’s like three dominoes, and everybody’s getting all that pressure. When people feel that pressure, that’s when they start to yell and scream and get angry and become incredibly irrational.

We also want to make certain we don’t have any holes in our contract, meaning areas where you’re exposed to something like losing your earnest money deposit if somebody cancels and it doesn’t work with the flow of the sale.

What was your client going through emotionally during all of this? How did you keep them steady?

We fully understand how all the pieces work together. It’s like a big chess game. We’re thinking through all the different variables, preparing everybody, setting expectations, and helping everything stay together, so if the first domino is delayed by a day or two or a week, everything else can still play out.

What does this story say about what it really takes to have the right agent in your corner?

I call it being a contractual architect. You’re designing the contract for the sale and the purchase so that everything works together, so you’re protected on the sale side and protected on the buy side, and ideally, so you move from one house directly to the next.

Part of that is doing the other agent’s job, too. We have to assume most agents are selling three houses a year, so they don’t know how to do this. We’re looking through our potential problems, and we’re also looking at what their potential problems may be and what they’re not thinking about, and really taking the reins to help steer the ship through the rough waters. If something happens on their side, it affects everybody. So we end up taking on a role of oversight of the other agent to make certain everything’s going to work together.

What I want you to do next if this story resonates with you.

There are many ways to sell or buy a property. If you’re making that transition, there are multiple things you need to look at and factor in, and different routes you can go. That’s exactly what we do. We step in and advise you. We’ll ask about your concerns and what options you have, help dissect your situation, and lay out the different paths in front of you, almost like a menu.

The more options you have, the better you’ll feel. Sometimes people don’t have many options, and that’s where we’ll help you figure out the best route for your situation.

If you’re looking at selling one place and buying another, and you’re not sure which end to start with, let’s talk it through. Call or text me at 626-408-2890, email me at daveknight@kw.com, or visit daveknightteam.com. I’ll help you figure out what routes are actually open to you and which one gets you there with the fewest moves.

Make it a great day!