Top 8 Ways to Buy and Sell a House at the Same Time in San Diego

The first and most common thing people think of is to make a contingent offer on the sale of your current home. The way that this works is you make an offer on the home you want to buy, but you're saying you won't actually buy the home unless you can sell your current home first. This honestly only really works if we're in a buyer's market and sellers are willing to accept this. In the market that we're in now, this generally just isn't working, so we need to move on to some better options.

The second option is to sell your home first and then negotiate a rent-back with a buyer of your home for a period of potentially up to two months. This gives you added flexibility and time to sell your home, search for and close on a new home. Now, you might get some of that rent back for free, or you might have to pay for some or all of that rent back. It'll just really depend on what we can negotiate with that buyer.

The third option is to stay in a short-term rental after you sell your first home and before closing on your next home. This gives you anywhere from a few days to several months to go ahead and buy your new home. With either a rent back or a short-term rental option, you can actually find a new home while you're selling your existing home and get an escrow on it, and then close on the new home shortly after you sell your first home. You just need to wait to close until your current home has sold. This allows you to sell your home, unlock that equity, and then close on your new home. The downside is you need to move all your belongings into storage for that period of time that you're in that short-term rental.

This method brings us to the fourth option, which uses a similar strategy to finding your new home, getting a new contract on that while under contract to sell your existing home, and that is a double close. So basically, you simply close escrow on the same day for both the home you're selling and buying. With the right title or Escrow Company, you can do this. However, everything has to go perfectly with both escrows to make this happen.

And that brings us to a few other options that do carry some extra costs and paperwork but can make the whole process a little bit easier and less stressful. The first of these is to obtain a bridge loan. So, the bridge loan is where you get a second mortgage for most of your needed down payment to go purchase that new home. Then you sell your existing home, and then you refinance all of that into one mortgage. This allows you to buy a new home, move into the new home, and then work on selling your original home. Now, the complication here, of course, is you're paying two mortgages at one time. It's oftentimes difficult for folks to qualify for two mortgages at once, and there are certainly some costs associated with this.

The second option using financing to make the move easier is to pull out a home equity line of credit or a HELOC on your existing home. If you have sufficient equity, you can use that equity to put a down payment on your new replacement home. However, again, you're going to have to qualify for two mortgages at the same time.

The next option, which I find often is the best for a lot of folks, is a home trading program that I have access to. And that allows you to buy before you sell. So what happens is you qualify for the program through this home trading partner that we work with. So what they do is they unlock your equity in your existing home so that you can buy a new home. And then you go and purchase your replacement home first and then turn around and sell your existing home. So you don't have to carry two mortgages at one time, and you can even get a rent-back window. We can even couple it with a cash offer program to turn you from a finance purchaser into a cash offer buyer. That makes your offer extremely competitive, and you can get into your home quickly with fairly low fees.

And finally, an eighth way is to actually not sell your home at all. So what you can do is buy a second home and rent out your existing home. You can count 75 percent of the rental income towards your income, helping you qualify for your second mortgage. So you can start building additional wealth through real estate.

So if any of these options sound like a good option for you, just reach out to me so we can figure out what makes the most sense for you. And I look forward to helping you purchase your next Dream Home. Thank you.