Buying and selling at the same time can be a daunting undertaking, especially with the seller's market here in the Raleigh-Durham area. Luckily, there are several options to make the process as easy as possible.
Option 1
If your lender approves you to carry two mortgages at the same time, you can go ahead and buy your new home. This allows you to move all your furniture and stuff to the new home, then prep and sell the vacant old home. This is by the far the easiest, but you may have to pay 2 mortgages for a couple of months until the home sells.
You can also use this option to buy first and then quickly sell your current home to reduce the overlap. Sometimes you can even eliminate the overlap entirely if you close on the same day, or use a 'rent back' when you sell your current home. Contact me for more info!
Option 2
If you need to use your equity in your current home to purchase the next one, then you can use a service like Ribbon. Ribbon buys your next home for you, and then you rent it from them until your home sells. At that point you get a mortgage and complete the purchase. The fee for this is typically ~2% of the new home purchase price, and sometimes you can get the seller to pay the fee since you will be providing an all cash offer through Ribbon.
Option 3
Get your current home under contract (ideally with a longer closing and rent-back period), and then place a contingent offer on another home. This way is the hardest, since a lot of sellers in the Raleigh-Durham area don't want to accept a contingent offer. However, if the home you want to purchase has been sitting on the market for a bit then this can work. Depending on the situation you may have to put up a lot of non-refundable deposit money, so it can be risky.
Let us help!
If you have any questions about this process, please don't hesitate to contact us and we'll be happy to help! Also, if you are buying or selling long distance be sure to check out our guides for this in our Guides and FAQ page.