It might feel like a high-wire act at times, but it’s absolutely possible to buy a new home before you’ve sold your old one.
Vickey Barron, a veteran real estate broker at Compass in New York, has a client who's moving to Los Angeles. The client thought it'd take a year to find a home, but she fell in love with a place right away.
“And she’s like, now what? I haven’t even listed my other home yet. What am I doing?" Barron says. "My accountant is telling me I’m out of my mind.”
The number-one concern that clients have is that their home will sell so fast that they’ll need to move out before they’ve found their next one, says Michael Perna, a real estate agent of over 20 years in Novi, Michigan.
“We have 32% of our properties going above asking, which means multiple offers,” Perna says. “Things are moving pretty quick.”
This isn’t just true in the Midwest. According to June 2026 data from the National Association of Realtors, the median amount of time for a home to sit on the market is 28 days, compared to the 10 weeks that it took the average buyer to find a home over the past few years.
Whether you need to move right away or you’ve got time to shop, having a clear strategy will help ensure that you don’t end up couch surfing or overly financially strained.
List your house ASAP
If you’ve got your sights on the next home you want to buy, you’ll want to list your current home as soon as you can.
If the seller isn’t in a rush to get out, they may agree to give you 30 days to sell your home. According to Barron, you’re more likely to have this request taken seriously if you already have the house on the market.
You could even have your agent present their marketing plan to the seller’s agent to demonstrate how they can get your house sold quickly. This is a preferred tactic for Nick Booth, a real estate agent with Utah Real Estate in Salt Lake City.
This gesture shows the seller that they can trust the sale will close, Booth says. “We’re selling hundreds of millions of dollars in real estate. We can sell this house, and this is how we’re going to do it.”
What to look for in an agent
A real estate agent with years of experience in your area can be a vital resource, especially when you’ve got a daisy-chain of transactions that need to be executed on a certain timeline for everyone to be happy.
A knowledgeable agent can communicate with all of the involved parties to organize closings. This helps ensure that the overall process — which can get complicated — runs as smoothly as possible.
“Real estate’s a small community,” Perna says. “We’re all fighting for the same clients during the day, but at night, we got to work together to figure it out. Otherwise, nobody gets a house and nobody gets paid.”
Your agent can represent you in both the purchase of your next home and the sale of your current one. This isn’t the same as dual agency (which you should avoid), where one agent represents both the buyer and seller in the same transaction.
What to look for in a seller
You might need to make an offer with a contingency, which stipulates that the purchase of your next house can’t officially close until you’ve sold your old one.
Making an offer that’s contingent on your home selling is one of the toughest negotiation points, says Booth. He sees most sellers in his market entertaining multiple offers, and it’s difficult to compete with one that can close smoothly in 30 days.
“So that’s when you start looking at specific neighborhoods, specific price points, and some of these houses that are sitting a little bit longer on the market,” he says. If the home has been listed for sale for a few months, the seller might be more flexible around your needs.
“When we do submit that offer, we’re not having to worry about three other offers that are all cash and no contingencies.”
According to Booth, these homes often take a while to sell because they were initially priced “a little too high.” After sitting for weeks, the price comes down, but now they’re competing with all the new listings that have since come onto the market. Without other offers to consider, yours becomes more attractive.
What to look for in a buyer
If you’re still looking for your next home, you can also have a contingency in your home sale contract that gives you a window to shop.
“The most important term I'm looking for is for this sale to be contingent on you finding the home of your choice within the next 90 days,” Perna says. “And a buyer's gonna do it, because it's gonna take them four to six weeks to find another home anyway.”
Perna recommends setting an asking price that’s a little bit below the home’s real value. This can draw in a larger pool of prospective buyers, who will bid against each other and be more flexible in contract negotiations.
Zillow data shows that buyers with conventional financing typically take 30 to 45 days from contract signing to close. As you evaluate offers, you’ll want to prioritize those with secured financing. If they’re paying with cash or can present a letter of preapproval from a lender, they’ll be more likely to be able to close within the timeline you need.
How to pay for your next home
Consider how much cash you’ll have in hand from your future home sale, and whether you’ll need additional financing for your new home.
Keep in mind, you won’t get to keep the full amount of your sale. Even after paying off any mortgage balances, you’ll have to pay sellers' fees, too. You can expect to spend between 10% and 15% of the home sale price on expenses like closing costs and agent commissions.
If the new house needs any immediate work, that will also eat into the profits from the sale.
If you’ve found your next home: consider a bridge loan
One option to finance your new home (without selling your old one just yet) is to get a bridge loan.
Designed to “bridge” the financial gap between buying a new home and selling your old one, bridge loans typically have terms up to 12 months with no prepayment penalties. To qualify for the loan, your home may need to already be listed for sale.
Bridge loans usually have higher interest rates than conventional mortgages and have closing costs of 1.5% to 3%. They’re typically offered by specialized lenders that focus on harder-to-find mortgages.
If you’re still shopping around: consider a HELOC
If you’ve got a substantial amount of equity built up in your current home, you could consider taking out a home equity line of credit, or HELOC, to put toward the purchase of your next property. When the original home sells, you’ll have to pay off the HELOC immediately, because it’s a second mortgage on that property.
A HELOC makes the most sense for homeowners who can open the line at least a few months before they plan to shop. You’ll have a hard time qualifying for a HELOC for a home that’s actively on the market, and some lenders won’t approve an application if the home was listed within the past 90 days.
It can also take several weeks to close on a HELOC, particularly if it’s a large line that needs a full appraisal or other underwriting requirements. Additionally, your county may take several days or weeks to record the lien on your deed.
You don’t need to access the cash right away — in fact, you shouldn’t, since you’d pay unnecessary interest. Instead, open the line of credit early and wait until you’re ready to buy to make a withdrawal.
It would be ideal to choose a lender that offers an introductory rate below the prime rate (currently 6.75%), since this is likely to be a short-term loan.
You’ll have to pay closing costs, which can be up to 5%. Some lenders offer HELOCs with no closing costs, but this usually requires the line to remain open for a certain number of years (typically three). Since you’ll have to pay off the HELOC once the home sells, you’ll have to pay back any lender-paid closing costs.
You could be buying your next home because you’ve found your dream property, or simply because you want the security of knowing where you’ll be sleeping before you sell. In any case, choose an agent who can help you navigate your options, and put a strategic plan in place before you make any offers.
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