When you bought your house

Were the seller's also looking to buy a house? If so, how did you work out the contract/timing? We are negotiating a contract right now and the sellers are trying to put a contingency based on them being able to purchase a house. We are not accepting the contingency but are afraid they are going to walk away from the deal now - we are anxiously awaiting their response. I just don't see how you can do that - then what if the people they are buying from put that in their contract? This could be a domino effect to go on forever!

Re: When you bought your house

I've heard of it-it's fairly common, but I've really only heard of the buyer requesting it (i.e. they own another house and want to buy this house with the contingency that they sell their other house). It's definitely risky because of the domino effect.

Re: When you bought your house

The sellers bought another house, luckily their sellers did not. It was a lot of waiting and things to work out, but in the end it all worked out fine.

Re: When you bought your house

when we bought this house we lived in an apt and she was building a new house that was already paid for. She wound up renting from us for 3 months. She kept trying to push the day we finally had to say enough and she had to go.

Now we are selling our house and can't even make offers till we go to contract. we have a fall back plan to stay at my dads house if the timing doesn't work on the house we pick. Not ideal but somewhere to go at least.

Re: When you bought your house

In my experience, those types of contingencies are not common. Typically, sellers should sell their home before buying something new, unless they can afford to carry two houses and can qualify for a mortgage on a second house while still owning the first. But we always advise sellers that when they go to buy something new, they can't have their offer be contingent on the sale of their existing home. That just won't fly.

Likewise, sellers should not expect to make the sale of their home contingent on their ability to find and purchase a new home. Most buyers expect that if someone has their home on the market, they are prepared to sell it and close within the normal time frame. Sometimes the closing date can be negotiated, if it works for both buyer and seller to delay it a bit. But generally, sellers make other arrangements to rent something short-term or stay with family until they can close on a new house (if the timing doesn't line up exactly right).

Re: When you bought your house