Lindsey Bergeron is a Hartford-based freelance writer and editor who writes about small business, lifestyle and real estate.
Jedda Fernandez , Associate Refresh Editor Jedda Fernandez Associate Refresh EditorJedda Fernandez is an associate refresh editor for HomeLight's Resource Centers with more than five years of editorial experience in the real estate industry.
As a homeowner, there’s a good chance that your next move will have you straddled with two major decisions at one time: selling your current home and buying a new one.
If you’ve found yourself in this complicated situation, know that you’re not alone: 51% of all buyers owned a previous home, according to a 2024 National Association of Realtors (NAR) report, and 59% said that finding the right property was the most difficult step of the home buying process.
Start Making Offers Without Waiting to Sell Your Home
Through our Buy Before You Sell program, HomeLight can help you unlock a portion of your equity upfront to put toward your next home. You can then make a strong offer on your next home with no home sale contingency.
Should you prefer not to use a home equity line of credit (HELOC) or a bridge loan to purchase a new house before selling your current one, your real estate agent might recommend including a home sale contingency in your offer. This means that if you’re unable to sell your current home by a specified date, you have the option of walking away from the contract and retaining your earnest money.
A sales contingency can make it harder to get your offer accepted, but it’s not impossible, especially if you sweeten the deal in other ways. Ahead, we’ll explore how to buy a house contingent on selling yours and glean insights from a top-performing agent who has helped buyers win a house with a home-sale contingency clause.
In real estate, a “contingency” refers to certain circumstances that must be met before a home sale can be finalized. For instance, a property might go under contract with a house inspection or financing contingency. This means that if a significant structural issue is found during the inspection or the buyer’s financing falls through, they’ll be able to terminate the contract without penalty.
In the case of a home sale contingency, the buyer will be under no obligation to follow through with the purchase of the new house unless their home sells.
These contingencies are typically good for one or two months, giving buyers a set amount of time to put their current house on the market and find a buyer. If their home fails to sell during this timeframe, the contract can be terminated.
There are two different types of home sale contingencies:
If you fall in love with a home prior to selling yours, your real estate agent can add a contingency clause to the terms of the offer. This clause will protect you from moving forward with the purchase before your current home sells, and it can go one of three ways:
With over half of all buyers being the owners of their previous residences, the process of buying a house that is contingent on selling yours is an everyday obstacle for buyers, sellers, and their agents. And yet, with only 5% of contracts terminated in the first quarter of 2024, it’s certainly not an obstacle that is insurmountable — especially with a bit of planning and an experienced real estate agent by your side.
How you move forward in the process will depend on where you are now. Let’s explore the four most common scenarios so that you can put your plan into place.
Choose your own adventure by picking the path that best represents where you are now in the process:
With moving day imminent, your focus is two-fold: make sure your home is packed and ready to go before the closing date and find your new home.
If you’re already this far along in the process, you probably have a good idea about where you want to move and what your motivations are. According to the NAR, top reasons for purchasing a home included a desire to be a homeowner and to be located closer to friends and family.
As you search for your dream neighborhood, here are a few key things to keep in mind:
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With your real estate agent’s help, the answers to the above questions can help narrow down your list of potential neighborhoods that you’ll want to target in your search. But just because a neighborhood checks all of your boxes on paper doesn’t mean it’s the right choice for you and your family. Here are a few online tools that can help take your research even further.
AreaVibes
Investigate the area’s crime statistics, as well as stats on other key factors, such as the area’s amenities, cost of living, education, housing, and weather. When you search for a particular city, neighborhood, or address, you’ll see how it scores in each of the key metrics, as well as how it compares to both surrounding communities and the country as a whole.
WalkScore
If living in an area where you can walk to the neighborhood coffee shop or grocery store is important to you, then you’ll want to check out this tool. Just type in an address, and you’ll see how walkable and bikeable the area is — as well as how close you are to schools, restaurants, shops, and other points of interest.
Google Street View
Take a virtual drive through a neighborhood to get a feel for the area, as well as the age and condition of homes, their proximity to each other, and what the traffic situation might look like. Simply type in an address and drop the “street view” icon on the map to start exploring.
GreatSchools
The quality of schools in a community has a big impact on property values and is, therefore, an important metric to consider — even if you don’t have children. GreatSchools pulls together school ratings and information for schools across the country and will compare schools within each state.
CityData.com
This site collects and analyzes data from a wide range of government and private sources to create profiles of every city and state in the country. Type in the name of the city you’re interested in learning about to get stats on the area’s demographics, income, house values, property taxes, crime levels, weather, and more.
Once you’ve identified a few neighborhoods that meet your criteria, it’s time to start house hunting. In a perfect world, your dream home will go on the market in one of these areas as soon as you start your search. If that doesn’t happen, however, or the competition in that area is so steep that houses are getting scooped up quickly, Andy Peters, one of the top-performing real estate agents in Atlanta, Georgia, has an unorthodox plan he used for buyers who needed to find a new home fast.
“We sent out mailers to the neighborhood they wanted to live in,” Peters said. “It was a very simple mailer, one-pager with a picture of the client — in this case, a family of four with their dog — and we told their story.”
The strategy worked. A seller in that neighborhood had just met with an agent and planned to list their house in the next 30 days. They ended up selling their home to Peters’ clients before the house ever hit the market.
If you’re struggling to find the perfect home for you and your family, don’t despair, and (just as importantly) don’t settle. It may not be your preferred option, but you could consider a short-term rental as you search for your new home.
While some markets are cooling a bit, the country is still tipped in favor of sellers overall due to tight inventory and an ongoing housing shortage, so it’s likely you will still be in a fairly good position to sell your current home. However, you might find yourself in a tough position when looking to buy another one. Having an experienced real estate agent on your side who can help with this process will be key.
Navigating the buying and selling processes at the same time can be overwhelming, as your focus will be split in two very different directions. Unless luck is on your side, it’s also very likely that one process will be completed before the other.
If your home goes under contract first, go back to Scenario A.
If you find your new home first, proceed to Scenario C.
In this scenario, you have to focus on selling your current home while at the same time preparing the best offer for your next home.
To ensure the fastest sale possible, you won’t want to put any obstacles between your home and potential buyers.
Now it’s time to focus on that offer for the new house.
Competition is inevitable and not something you can control. What you can control is making your offer as attractive as possible.
Here are a few tips that can help:
Together, this combination of strategies for selling your current home while making an offer on your next home will put you on the best path to achieving success.
If you are facing a scenario wherein you’re selling your current home at the same time you are preparing to purchase your next home, consider jumping to our section below called “ Other ways to sell…”
Simply put: get your home on the market.
According to the NAR Realtors Confidence Index Survey, houses were on the market for an average of 22 days in June 2024 — four days more than the same period the year before. That’s a relatively short amount of time, and the process can feel quite rushed.
After your offer on your new home is accepted, there will be a lot to do: making necessary repairs and cosmetic updates to your current house, listing it, managing showings, reviewing offers, entering into a contract, and closing the deal. During this time, there’s a significant risk that your contingent offer could expire or the sellers might find another buyer.
This is assuming that a seller would take the gamble of accepting a contingent offer from a buyer whose home isn’t even listed yet. Peters, for one, would not.
“If you had somebody come to the table and their house isn’t even listed, and they want to buy a listing, I am very trigger shy to do that,” he said. “They have to show some motivation that they’re on the market, and they’re making a conscious effort.”
When you’re ready to put your home on the market, proceed to Scenario C, or consider a whole new scenario below.
