Selling before buying...

Message edited 3/16/2008 11:27:49 AM.

Re: Selling before buying...

In this market, it may be the better move. I know friends of ours have had three deals fall through and they had already went into contract for their new home. Another friend had to close on her new home, even though her old home's deal fell through.

If you put it on the market, you can also add in cushion time to the possession date - so that a stipulation of an offer would include an extra month or so for you.

The issue with that though was that some buyers will be turned off - I know I was when I loved a particular house but the possesion was 120 days!

You can also make a sellers contingency that its contigent on you finding a home - that same house I mentioned had that as well - again, turned me off. But I guess it was their safe guard.

We ended up having a handshake deal with our friend so we knew we would be closing with her before our sale went through. So we felt more comfortable looking for new houses. In this market I would sell then buy.

Message edited 11/6/2007 9:56:11 AM.

Re: Selling before buying...

We didn't want to take any chances and have to pay 2 mortgages. So we put our house on the market, sold it, moved in with my inlaws, and than started looking for a house. We wanted the money in hand to start looking. We found a house in 2 mos.

Re: Selling before buying...

Re: Selling before buying...

We did. We sold in April and moved into a rental. We close on our new house next week. Not ideal but in this market I am just so happy we got out when we did.

Re: Selling before buying...

DEFININTELY put your co-op on the market. You can look at houses in the meantime so you'll know where you want to buy and what you might want to make an offer on if it's still on the market.

The market is very bad for sellers right now, so I wouldn't count on selling your co-op quickly, even if that was the norm a year or two ago. Also, I wouldn't buy anything until you have a signed contract from the buyer. We had at least three deals fall through, and we bought our house on the promise of one of these deals. The woman's attorney swore they would send us the contract the following week, and guess what? They did not, the buyer backed out, so we were back to square one. Luckily, it all worked out, and we did find a serious buyer before long, but don't make our mistake.

Re: Selling before buying...

we put our house on the market before we bought again and lived with my parents in the interim

we plan to do this again when we decide to move.

Re: Selling before buying...

If you are depending on that money in order to buy the new one, then I would just sell your house, move in with your folks and then get a new house..

This market is nuts right now..

Re: Selling before buying...

We put our townhouse on the market and started looking at houses right away. We knew we wouldn't make an offer on anything unless we were in contract for the townhouse. We just wanted to know what was out there and be prepared to move quickly once we had an offer on the townhouse. Once we got an offer on our townhouse we went that weekend to look again at the houses we were really interested in and made an offer on the one we wanted. Our contract had a contingency clause in it that the purchase of the new home was contingent on the sale of our townhouse. That way if the sale of our townhouse fell through we wouldn't be stuck with 2 mortgages.

Also, if you do find a house you love, but haven't sold your first house yet you can put a contingency clause in that contract as well. That way you are not forced to buy the house in the case that you don't sell your first house. The sellers can still continue to show the house until you sell yours and if they get another offer you would get the right of first refusal, meaning that you can either decide to move forward and buy the house without selling your first house or back out of the deal and let the other person buy it. The problem is you might get attached to a house and then have to lose it. But it might work out in this market the way houses are sitting for a long time.

I should also say that I'm in NJ so things might work differently in NY. Timing the sale of both houses was very stressful, but it all worked out in the end. Good luck!

Re: Selling before buying...

Ok great!
Thank you everyone for your responses