Original Publish Date: Jan 14, 2020
You’ve found your dream home. Your 10+ year plan. The space you see your family living for the foreseeable future. So how do you sell your first home, and buy that special place all at once? Selling and buying a home at the same time might seem overwhelming, but it’s doable. To make the process as smooth and stress-free as possible, you’ll need to focus on three key areas:
- Team
- Finances
- Timelines and expectations
Build Your Dream Team
During your home selling and buying process, you’ll likely live and work as usual. That means your life will be busy, as selling and buying a home at the same time will add to your workload. To eliminate additional work for you and to keep stress at a minimum, you’ll need (and want) someone to assist you. Assemble a team of agents at both ends of your real estate transaction:
- Listing agent: The agent who helps you sell your home.
- Buyer’s agent: The agent who helps you buy a home.
Selling
During the sale of your home, you’ll have a few things to carry out yourself:
- Gather info about your home to list the details
- Clean up and get ready for pictures and showings
- Set up lines of communication so you can stay in contact with your agent
- Sign paperwork and come to scheduled meetings
A good listing agent will take care of all the nitty gritty details and the paperwork. When you work with a Homie agent, here are some of the things you can expect them to do:
- Consult on listing price
- Market your home
- Filter buyer calls
- Fill out and review paperwork and contracts
- Negotiate on your behalf with the buyer’s agent
It’s clear why you’d need someone to help you through selling your home; there’s so much to do!
Buying
Buying a home is a lot of fun. Who doesn’t like to browse listings, go to showings, and walk through gorgeous model homes? This is the part you’ll want to make time for. As a buyer, you’ll need to do a few things:
- Get finances in order (we’ll go over this more later)
- Set aside time to go on tours
- Set up lines of communication to keep in contact with your agent
- Sign paperwork and come to scheduled meetings
Your buyer’s agent is going to do what everyone else dreads doing: paperwork. When you work with a Homie agent, you can expect them to assist you by:
- Working with listing agents to schedule showings
- Generating contracts (offers, addendums)
- Scheduling meetings
- Negotiating on your behalf with the listing agent
Your buyer’s agent is one of the key pieces of your dream team.
Assemble!
Your dream team should be assembled as soon as you start shopping around or listing your home. The earlier on your team can prepare for your transaction, the better off everyone will be. Here are a few things to look out for when you’re on the hunt for MVPs for your team:
- Cost. What commissions will you pay as the seller or buyer? How can you save without sacrificing service?
- Experience. How many transactions has the agent handled? How well-versed are they in different types of home buying and/or selling situations?
- Availability. Is your agent going to be available to answer any questions you may have via text, email, or call? Support is key.
Know Your Finances
You need money to buy a home. That’s not surprising at all, but many people don’t know how much money they need, or where to get it. Here’s a quick step-by-step:
- Find a mortgage broker you trust. Look at reviews and get a recommendation from your buyer’s agent. (A Homie agent will recommend Homie Loans™*.)
- Get prequalified with that broker. Seriously. Do this before you even start browsing listings. Prequalification is a quick check on your finances that will give you a price range you can use to narrow down homes.
- Start saving (get less takeout?) and start eliminating debt where you can (pay down those credit cards). You don’t want to make any large credit changes like opening a new line of credit or buying a car.
- Explore your options. Talk to your loan officer and see what you can do in your unique situation. You don’t have to have perfect credit, and you don’t have to have a 20% down payment. That’s why it’s important to start talking about what options will be best for you.
Sale Proceeds
When you’re selling and buying a home at the same time, you can use the profit from selling your current home to help you buy the next. After the buyer closes on the purchase of your home, you’ll need to wait for the sale to fund and record. (That means the money moves accounts and the legal documents get sorted out.) In some cases, all that happens the same day. It’s more likely that it will all happen the day after the buyer closes.
Your listing agent will need to convey the situation to the buyer’s agent on your home as early as possible. You may need a few days to finish the purchase and move from your old home to your new one.
Know Your Timeline
There are a couple of timeline situations home buyers commonly encounter. These timelines depend mostly on the buyer’s financial circumstances.
Selling a Home and Using Proceeds
If you’re going to sell a home to fund the purchase of a new one, you’ll usually have to wait for a buyer to fall in love with your home and buy it first. (This isn’t always the case. More on that later.)
Once the sale of your home has been funded and recorded, the gears start turning fast. The money the buyer owes for your home will be dispersed to the appropriate parties. If you have a mortgage on the home, your mortgage company will be paid off first. Title fees and closing costs will also be paid. Any dough that’s left over after that is all yours.
Your proceeds from the sale can be given to you in a few ways if you’re using them to buy your new home:
- You can get a check for the proceeds and you can give it to whomever needs it to purchase the home.
- The funds can be held in escrow by a title company and wired to whomever needs it to get your new crib.
The timing of buying your next home can get a little tricky. You don’t have to wait until you have the cash in your hand to put an offer in on a home. You do have to wait until the buyer of your home has paid out in order to close on the next sale.
Selling a Home Without Proceeds
If you don’t need the proceeds of a home sale to buy a home, you can essentially move as fast as the seller can. This is true even if you’re selling and buying a home at the same time. They may have to sell before they can buy a new home, or have other considerations. Make sure to communicate your timeline to your agent so they can keep all of the relevant parties updated.
Cash Offers
Generally, cash offers are similar to the situations above. If you will receive the cash after a sale, you’ll need to follow the steps outlined in that section but you won’t need to worry about a mortgage company.
If you have the cash now and the sale of a home is irrelevant, you can move as quickly as the seller can. Again, you won’t need to worry about a loan.
Buy Before You Sell
Did you know that you don’t have to worry about selling and buying a home at the same time? With Homie Cash, you can buy before you sell. That means that you can find and purchase your new home first. Then, you have 60 days to move out and sell your old home. It can make the process of selling and buying a home much less stressful.
*Homie and Homie Loan have a business relationship in that all are owned by the same persons. Legal Terms & Policies