Putting the cart before the horse, selling AND buying

We've been in RE for almost 40 yrs between my husband and I, and we know what to tell Sellers who are wanting to sell one house and buy another.

-Get the house you're selling on the market, Sellers for the house you're wanting to buy will probably NOT take a contingency on yours selling. Don't start looking too soon. Don't put the cart before the horse.

Of course we don't always listen to our own advice...

We bought a house in Payson, AZ right before the market started climbing almost straight up. We bought it as a fixer-upper to live in while we still had our two teenage sons at home. It was one of the FEW houses we looked at that had enough paved parking for our cars and our sons' friends' cars. We have redone the inside nicely, but still have to finish the outside to get the curb appeal. Our oldest son will be home from college soon, our younger son graduates from HS soon, and we decided this would be a good summer to finish the house, sell it, and buy another fixer-upper to work on for the next couple of years. The boys can do the hard work, Les has the expertise; we have a very large equity in the house we're in, might as well use it.

The problem with all of this is that I started thinking too much about what we wanted in a house to buy BEFORE we got our house ready to sell. I've found the right place; one we can live in, one with potential (cosmetic problems primarily- of course we would do inspections before we would buy), decent neighborhood (we like older neighborhoods), decent price (room to make money once its fixed up). Now COULD we buy it while still owning the other one? Well, yeah, but we're going to have higher interest if we buy it as an investment property instead of our primary residence. And we figure it will take us about a month after our boys are out of school to get the first house ready to market, average DOM in Payson are over 100...

I have a little more sympathy for Sellers/Buyers in this spot now than I used to have. What are we going to do? I think we'll work on our present house and just see what happens with the one we would like to buy. We're gambling it won't sell too fast. If it does, something else will come along. But I hope it doesn't sell before we're ready. We'll see.

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