When you are looking for a new home and you still have your old home it can be difficult to figure out the timing on what you should do. There are a couple different ways that you can go about this.
Sell The Old Home First
Your first option is to sell your old home before you start looking for a new home. This can be a good idea if 
you have a limited amount of money to spend on house payments each month. This can also be a great way to go about it if you can arrange for a longer sale of your home giving you more time to look for a new property to purchase. A down side to this type of arrangement comes if you are unable to find a new home before you have to move out of your old home. This can be a big problem if you find yourself needing to find a temporary rental while you search for a home to buy. Moving once can be difficult enough, so moving twice, once from your old home to your rental and once from your rental to your new home, is likely to be twice as difficult.
There are certain benefits that you will get from selling your old home before buying a new home. For starters you will know exactly how much money that you have to work with because you will have already sold your old home. This will help you to be able to budget out how much you can pay for your new home.
Buy A New Home Before You Sell Your Old Home
If you can afford to make two payments, one on your old home and one on your new home, then you can start looking for a new home right away without worrying about selling your home first. This will give you flexibility and time to really find the new home that you want, without having to worry about moving more than once.
One of the problems that can arise if you go with this option though is the risk of buying property now, and then not being able to sell your old home at a later time due to the falling market. If your old home is in a good location then you may be able to find some renters for it which will help alleviate the stress of having two homes with repayment notes.
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Hi Sean,
I’d rather buy a new home before I sell the old one. I think that would be a lot less stressful than trying to do it the other way. Still, you’d have to make sure that you have some money in reserve in case of emergencies.
If you don’t need the money from selling your home to buy the new one it’ll give you more time to get the price you want.
Is there a type of bridgeing finance that is available to make the transition from one home to another easier? great point with using the old house as a rental, the extra money will be handy and in the case that you don’t sell you may end up with an investment property be default.