Moving and buying/selling houses

[leahb12]

I need some logistics help! We will be putting our house on the market soon and want to buy right away in the Atlanta area for a few reasons. For those of you who have sold and bought houses, how did you line it all up? We can't put an offer on a house until we sell our current house. So can you put an offer in on a house if your current house is under contract (does that make sense? We need the money from our house to make a down payment)? Did you line up the closing dates so you weren't homeless? Ahh so much to think about.

[kmc84]

You can absolutely have it in your contract that you need to have an accepted offer before you close. Closings can be arranged to be held on the same day too-happens all the time! Just make sure you are upfront with your realtor and attorney about your needs. Good luck!

[leahb12]

Thanks kmc84! So can we get prequalified for a house if our house is under contract but we don't technically have that money yet?

[kmc84]

Mar 12, 2015 20:17:26 GMT -5 leahb12 said:

Thanks kmc84! So can we get prequalified for a house if our house is under contract but we don't technically have that money yet?

You should be able to since it's an asset.

[christina]

As long as you have equity in your house, you shouldn't have a problem getting pre-approval for a loan for the next house.

[amandaleigh]

Just a thought-- since you are being relocated, would your husband's employer be open to paying for temporary, furnished housing? That way you would not be so rushed to buy the house in your new location.

[mnj05]

Definitely what kmc said. My mom works for a title company and sees this all the time, they call it contingency. You just put in your contract that the purchase of your new home is contingent on your current home selling. They usually give you a time period of that happening, at least around here they do.

[cinc1em]

Many relo packages include purchasing your current home in x weeks if it's not sold. Then the relo company sells it to a permanent buyer. Does you package have this option? The relo company number is usually a bit less than you'd like to get, but the guarantee is nice.

Also, if your house doesn't sell right away & you want to buy you may qualify for a bridge loan. It allows you to carry both properties temporarily.

[leahb12]

Thanks everyone. Buying our house is not a part of our relo package, but the housing market is good around us and we have a great house. I'm hoping it won't take long.

mnj05 I thought that putting an offer on a house with the contingency our house sells was frowned upon now. Am I wrong?

[chiwifey]

We just went through this. We couldn't put an offer in on a new house until we had a contract on our current house because our realtor didn't think anyone would take that offer seriously. Once we accepted an offer on our old house, we put in an offer on a new place contingent on the sale of our current home. We were pre-approved for a mortgage for the new house before getting a contract on the old one but again we didn't put in any offers because my realtor thought it was a waste.

Our closing dates are the same day. We will close on our current house and go straight into a close for the new house.

Let me know if you have any other questions. Excited for you and your family!

[TJ]

Well our old house hasn't sold yet so I might not be the person to ask. Haha. But you should be able to get preapproval no problem.

We were also able to do some weird thing where we only put down 5% for now, and once our house sells, we will put down the rest and get rid of the PMI. If that makes sense.

Due to the distance, we moved out if our house on a Thursday, stayed in a hotel Thursday night, closed on the house Friday, stayed in a hotel Friday night, started the move in Saturday morning.

[kaf7]

Ugh. So stressful! But that is what people have to do all of the time. I would follow pp advice. We had to buy our house in July and move in Nov. Our new home closed in Sept with our ILs providing the down payment. It ended up that our old home sold and closed in early October but we worked out leasing it from the buyer for 6 weeks to cover the gap. Luckily, he had been planning to use it as an income property. I don't recommend what we did. Everyone else has better advice.