Selling and buying at the same time

Lining up a sale and a purchase is the most common situation we see, and there is no single right way to do it. The right plan depends on your finances, how tight the market is in the town you are buying in, and how much uncertainty you can live with. Below are the four approaches Connecticut sellers use, with the honest trade-offs of each, and how one agent handling both sides keeps the pieces from coming apart.

Option one: sell first, then buy

You list, go under contract, and shop for your next home with a firm sale behind you. Your offer on the new house is strong because it is not contingent on selling, and you know exactly what you have to spend. The risk is timing. If you close on the sale before you find the next home, you need somewhere to live in between.

The tools that make this work are a rent-back, where you stay in the sold house for a short period after closing and pay the buyer rent, and a longer closing date on the sale. In Connecticut a rent-back is usually written as a use and occupancy agreement and is typically limited to a few weeks. Many buyers will agree to it for a well-priced house.

Option two: buy first, then sell

If you can qualify for the new mortgage while still carrying the old one, you buy the next home, move once, and then list the empty house, which shows beautifully. This is the least stressful path if you can afford it and the most expensive one if the old house sits. Talk to your lender before assuming you qualify, and price the old house to sell, not to wait.

Bridge loans and home equity lines on the current house can supply the down payment for the new one. They cost money and they need to be set up before you go under contract on the purchase.

Option three: a contingent purchase

You make an offer on the new home that depends on the sale of your current one. In Connecticut this is commonly written as a Hubbard clause. The seller accepts your offer but keeps marketing the house. If another buyer comes along, you get a short window, often 48 to 72 hours, to remove the contingency and proceed, or step aside.

This works best in a slower market or on a home that has been listed for a while. In a competitive town with multiple offers, a contingent offer usually loses to a clean one. If you go this route, have your current house listed and looking sharp before you make the offer. Sellers take a contingent buyer far more seriously when the house they need to sell is already on the market and priced right.

Option four: the simultaneous close

The sale of your house and the purchase of the next one close on the same day, often in the same attorney's office, with the proceeds from the first funding the second. This is common in Connecticut and it works well when both deals are solid and both attorneys are coordinating. The moving truck is loaded in the morning, the sale closes, the purchase closes, and you unload in the afternoon.

The risk is that any delay on one side, a missing document, a late wire, a walkthrough problem, delays both. We build a day or two of cushion into the dates where we can, and we keep both attorneys, both lenders, and both agents on the same timeline.

Why one agent for both sides helps

When the same agent handles your sale and your purchase, the timelines are managed by one person who knows both contracts. We know the earliest date your sale can close, we write the purchase contract to match, and when something shifts on one side we adjust the other before it becomes a problem. With 100+ agents across our East Hampton, Colchester, Glastonbury, and Middletown offices, we also tend to know about listings before they hit the market, which matters when you are on a clock.

And when the move finally happens, our clients can use the CGA moving truck at no charge. It is a small thing that makes a hard week easier.

Where to start

Start with two numbers: what your current house will sell for, and what you can qualify to buy. We prepare the first with a written comparative market analysis. A local lender prepares the second, and we can recommend a few who are good at exactly this kind of two-sided deal. With those two numbers, the right plan is usually obvious, and we map out the dates from there.