... how did you do it?
1. Did you sell your old house, rent in the meantime and then buy a new house?
2. Did you keep and rent your old house?
3. Was the purchase of your new house contingent on the sale of your old house?
We found a terrific house we really like and are in the process of talking to a realtor about making an offer, but our offer will be contingent on the sale of our current house. I'm not sure if the sellers will go for it, though.
pear / 1503 posts
I'm 33 and my husband and I are on our 3rd (my 4th) purchased house. We're both military and have moved every 2-4 years. Although we could rent, we both like having our own place, and have enjoyed being home owners; doing renovations, gardening, landscaping are somewhat hobbies of ours.
We've both made the purchase contingent on the sale of our old house, and sold the house first; for the later we requested the purchase date to be a couple of days after the sale date. In all three cases, we were only in a hotel for a few days each, and were able to work with the realtors to get purchase/sale dates that worked to our advantage.
Our experience has been that it hasn't been a problem, but the fewer contingencies you have, the better. We always put in financing (although that one is a no brainer for us), and home inspection, too.
pomegranate / 3331 posts
We rented in between but that was personal circumstance. I'd say whether to make the purchase contingent on the same
E depends how competitive the market is near you.
wonderful pea / 17279 posts
When my husband moved to where I lived he put his house on the market. We were paying two mortgages for about 6-7 months before his house finally sold. When it did sell we had to help the seller with her closing costs and he sold it for less than he paid. So that was a lost.
pineapple / 12793 posts
Our area is a sellers market so you can't have any contingencies on your offer. It's a scary game.
cantaloupe / 6397 posts
We had about a week between closing dates so we used bridge financing through our mortgage lender to cover holding two mortgages, and we stayed with my parents!
I don't think sellers like clauses where you have to sell your home. You might be better off selling your home first and then making an offer if the place is still available.
kiwi / 637 posts
We rolled the dice and signed a deal to purchase our current home before selling out previous home. It was a scary time but we managed to sell our old place and closed both deals on the same day (totally stressful, but worth it because we were moving within the city and didn't want the added cost of bridging out mortgage).
For our next place, we will likely be moving to another community and we are toying with the idea of keeping our current home and renting it out.
pomegranate / 3917 posts
We bought our new house first, insane house market here so no worries on selling our old house. We were nervous though and sold way early, got asking price firm in 4 days with a 7 month closing! We had other offers sooner, two, but they wanted normal closing dates 1-3m.
The builder of our new house would not har accepted any conditions so we knew we couldn't put that in.
honeydew / 7687 posts
We moved before we sold our old home; DHs employer would've bought it after three months if it didn't sell. We borrowed the down payment for the second house from our emergency fund and a small 401k loan that we replayed once our house sold a month later.
grapefruit / 4441 posts
We bought the new house and then sold the old house. We put the old house on the market immediately after we closed on the new house and it sold about 2.5 weeks later. My parents "gifted" (really loaned) each of us 12k (I think that is the IRS limit for a tax free gift?) to put towards the down payment on the new house. We then "gifted" them back all the money a couple weeks later after we sold our old house. Basically a bridge loan. We did have to initially qualify to pay the mortgages on both homes, which we did.
@Katrocap: good luck! I hope you get the house. They may go for it if their house has been on the market awhile.
GOLD / wonderful grape / 20289 posts
We've been renting out our old house for three years. Can't wait till we sell it!
honeydew / 7811 posts
@Katrocap: my in laws did this by way of #3. It was pretty stressful, but it all worked out in the end. They sold a house in TN and bought in VA. There were just a few days in between closings and they stayed with us - also stressful! 
kiwi / 673 posts
Ultimately, we chose a new home that had a purchase price where we could qualify to keep the old home if we wanted to. We weighed renting it out indefinitely because the old home was in a great location for a younger couple or grad students, but didn't want to be landlords. For us, wanting to qualify for both mortgages was also a good way to keep us within a smaller budget.
We've also had friends who chose to build a new home and sold their old home as soon as possible. During the in between time they rented. I don't know that they'd ever do that again if they could help it because the short term renting options were pretty expensive for not that much space.
eggplant / 11824 posts
I think what you should do really depends on what you can realistically and comfortably afford. Can you afford to carry 2 mortgages? If not, I'd be wary of even relying on renting one place out, while owning 2. Also, whether you'll qualify for the house while carrying the 1st property mortgage debt.
We decided to turn our condo into an investment property and rented it out after buying our house, but it's not something I would do unless you can swing 2 mortgages as land lording can be stressful! We've now got our condo on the market and have turned down 1 offer that was contingent on the sale of their house. Just too many unknowns there and want a quicker sale.
coconut / 8472 posts
We were casually looking and found a house we love. We put in an offer with a home sale contingency and they rejected it. So we put our house on the market and 3 days later it was sold. We resubmitted our offer and they eventually agreed to it. We did both closings in one day, which was really stressful.
If we ever sell our current house, I'd see if we could do a rent back, where you close and then rent for a week or two from your buyers. It was so hard getting out of one house and into the new one on the same day.
persimmon / 1026 posts
We are in the process of selling our house now and buying a new one - we put a clause in our offer stating that the purchase of our new house was contingent based on our old house going through purchase & sale. When we accepted the offer on our house, we negotiated to have the closing date be 65 days from the date we accepted, so it gave us some time to search. Luckily we found our new house 3 days later.
blogger / grapefruit / 4836 posts
We didn't end up moving, but we were going to do #1 or #3. We would absolutely never take the risk of having two mortgages. We don't even like having one. We could have made an offer with a contingency, but we decided to stay in our home and add on instead.
honeydew / 7444 posts
We bought our new house and then sold our house. We requested a later possession date (60 days) which gave us enough time to sell the house. We were able to close on our old house fairly quickly though.
What is the market like in your area right now?
pomegranate / 3595 posts
We were considering moving this spring but we could only afford a bigger house contingent on the sale of this one. We decided to wait a year and reevaluate as we would be in a different position to potentially carry two mortgages if needed then. We did not want to sell our house and then be stuck if we could not find anything we liked.
honeydew / 7622 posts
We still own our first house and have had fabulous renters in there for 2 1/2 years.
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