Great questions, Denita. Our realtor says it’s the same in our area where it’s not standard to accept the contingency on selling the first home unless there is already a contract in place. my husband and I are considering making the offer without the contingency. I have confirmed that we would qualify for the new mortgage with us already having the existing mortgage and that the interest rate for the new mortgage would still be very favorable.

We would be able to carry both mortgages for a few months but we would definitely need our current home to sell to replenish our savings.

Get the actual figures from your lender for a worst case scenario so you can make appropriate plans.

Hopefully you are using a non-bank lender like Guaranteed Rate or others rather than a big box bank. Right now the big box banks are changing their guidelines to be much more restrictive.

Speak to your Realtor about DOM in your area for vacant homes - staged or not.

I have found in this specific market with Covid-19 concerns, the vacant homes are selling and closing very quickly in my area. I'm a Realtor and that's what I see here but I'm in S Florida so it may be different where you are located. Your Realtor can give you specifics for your neighborhood.

It really depends on how comfortable you are with risk. I'm not - so buying before selling for me would provoke anxiety attacks in the middle of the night. But if you have the liquidity to do this for the long haul you might feel different.

In my case, I twice purchased a new home before listing existing home, reason being both times were very tight housing markets and I anticipated it would be by far harder to find a new home I'd be happy with in the area I wanted to live than selling. I was right both times. I was fortunate to be in a position to be able to do this -- first time around with a bridge loan, the second time with enough of a down payment and ability to carry two mortgages for a time if needed. I realize not everyone is in that sort of position, but my advice is if you are and houses are selling relatively quickly in your area, buy the new home first - otherwise you'll be stuck in temporary housing at best, at worst purchase in desperation a new home you don't really want. (I do see you have your eye on a house already - but it might be gone if you don't jump on it, I think there's a lot of pent-up demand - for affordable housing, at least)

Mxk3 - yes, that is our concern especially as we have two kids which makes finding temporary housing difficult. I’m also currently on maternity leave and, ideally, we’d like to be moved into our new house before I have to go back to work so I can also have daycare lined up.

We ideally wanted to sell our home first then purchase but out realtor called us about a HUD home foreclosure and the first 10 days was homeowners and after that they would open it up to investors. It had some minor issues but the neighborhood we had been looking in for 8 years, the high school our kids desired to attend, the square footage we desired, actually more (3976sq ft). We counted the cost and went over worst case scenarios 1000x. Our worst case would be to rent our home until we could sell, thankful we did not have to do that. Started process with new home March 29, received keys on new home May 11, sold existing home June 1, 2020. So everything went really quick but we did it would I recommend this only if you can withstand pressure because it was alot

Certainly depends on your risk tolerance - your scenario would exceed mine especially in the midst of a pandemic. Presumably your jobs are rock solid and you have little/no risk of losing income (due to health or economy) and being unable to continue paying two mortgages longer than expected if things didn't go as well as planned. We bought our last house and moved before putting our home on the market but we had no mortgages and the economy was stable.

How is your crystal ball? Mine's a little fuzzy right now.

how much will it cost?

Try to find a good realtor, because we want to move, and also will need to sell and to buy new house

I think if that new house is so good, then maybe you should look for another realtor or company that buys real estate. Then maybe you can buy your dream home. We were in the same situation last year, we had moved and had found a house that we really wanted to buy before we sold our old one. This company that buys real estate helped us a lot. They bought our house in just two weeks. thepropertybuyingcompany.co.uk Here on their website there is an interesting article about why it is worth selling quickly and how they can do everything so quickly.

A house we'd once looked at, loved and considered buying but couldn't afford 10 years earlier came on the market. We were in a better position financially, had our home paid off so we made an offer with no contingencies. Took our time moving in while we fixed some things up but it was 14 months before we sold. A little anxiety at the time but no regrets as we got our asking price and the home we love.