Selling Your Home Archives - George L. Duarte

Strategies For Buying And Selling A Home At The Same Time If you’re already a homeowner and you’re getting ready to buy a new home, you know it’s tricky to buy and sell a home at the same time. There are lots of questions about how to handle this scenario. What if your old home doesn’t sell quickly?

Will you have to make two mortgage payments? What if you sell and the new owners want to move in before you close on your new home?

Depending on your situation, here are some strategies available to you.

Get A Bridge Loan

If you find yourself facing more than one mortgage payment – one on your old house and one on your new house – consider taking out a bridge loan to pay the monthly mortgage on the old house. Bridge loans are a solution to a temporary problem. When your old house sells, you pay off your bridge loan and you’re left with just the one mortgage payment.

Move Into A Short-Term Rental

If your old house has sold and the owners want to close before you can close on your new house, you could move into a short-term rental. This could be an apartment with a short-term lease. Or it could be a long-term hotel accommodation. You’d likely have to move your furnishings into storage; again, only for the short-term until your new house is available.

Ask If You Can Lease Back Your Home

You could ask the buyers of your current home to allow you to rent your home until you’re able to move into your new house. This is called a lease-back. It’s not ideal to pay rent on your own house, but it saves you from having to move twice.

This strategy usually only works if you already have a new house deal, so the owners of your old house have a known estimated time-frame when you’ll be moving out.

It’s definitely tricky trying to figure out the arrangements when you’re buying and selling a house at the same time. But one of the strategies mentioned above will likely work out for you.

Your trusted home mortgage professional is a valuable resource and can help you secure the best financing options while you are transitioning into your new home.

To Improve or Not to Improve Selling your home is one of the most stressful things you’ll ever go through and one of the most important decisions you’ll ever make. However, there’s a lot more to selling your home than just sticking a sign out in the front yard. Most likely, your home will need a little work before it is perfect.

Therefore, you’ll have to decide whether you need to take care of home improvement issues yourself or, to sell with the expectation that the buyer will be the one to do so.

We put together a few pros and cons to doing it each way to make your decision a little easier.

Do The Improvements Yourself

Choosing to complete needed improvements yourself means that you will likely get a higher sales price for your home. In addition, with less work to do, it opens up your home to more buyers than one that is a fixer-upper does. Selling will usually be faster and closing more likely to go smoothly.

On the other hand, chances are good that you will not get the full value you put into those improvements at the closing table. In addition, when you are moving, money may be tight making this an even more difficult proposition.

Sell It As A Fixer Upper

The main benefit of selling your home as a fixer-upper is that you will not have to put additional money in up front to pay for updates or repairs. If you are in a difficult financial situation or selling your home at a loss, this may be necessary.

Additionally, you would avoid coordinating work with contractors and obtaining bids on all of the work. This can be an especially strong consideration if you are selling a home at a distance from where you live or for a relative who no can no longer stay in the home.

One of the downfalls to selling your home as a fixer-upper is that you’ll likely get a lower price and some buyers won’t even come out and view your home if they think there is too much work that needs to be done.

One consideration may be to look at the most inexpensive updates that you can afford to do that will present your home in the best way possible. Oftentimes painting is one of the most economical ways to improve the look of your home and freshen it up for new buyers.

Discuss your concerns and speak honestly about your financial picture with your trusted mortgage professional and perhaps you will have a better idea of which of these options is the smart choice for your situation.

Strategies For Buying And Selling A Home At The Same Time

Should You Improve Your Home Before Selling Or Not?

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