Scott Gaertner, North Scottsdale Real Estate
I’ve been hearing the same thing over and over lately.
“We’d love to move, but we can’t sell first.”
“And we don’t want to make our offer contingent and lose the next house.”
They’re not wrong.
In this market, contingent offers are still a tough sell. Sellers want certainty. A clean offer with fewer moving parts usually wins. And that leaves a lot of homeowners feeling stuck, even when they have substantial equity in their current home. They may want to move closer to family, simplify, pick up a second home, or finally make a lifestyle change they’ve been talking about for years. But they don’t know how to unlock that equity without selling first and suddenly being under pressure to find the next house fast.
What I’m finding is most homeowners have more options here than they think they do. Most assume they only have two choices: sell first and hope they can find something quickly, or make a contingent offer and hope a seller accepts it.
One option is using other assets temporarily instead of selling immediately. I’m seeing some buyers use a line of credit against a brokerage account, or occasionally borrow from a 401(k). They’re not liquidating investments. They’re simply using those assets to buy the next home first, then paying things back once their current home sells.
Another common approach is borrowing against the current home itself through a home equity line, home equity loan, or cash-out refinance. The challenge is qualifying while carrying two homes for a period of time, but many homeowners are in a stronger position financially than they realize. There are also true bridge loans available. Not as many as there used to be, and they tend to cost more, but they’re specifically designed for that gap between buying one home and selling another.
But the solution I’m seeing the most lately is actually much simpler. Instead of trying to perfectly line up two closings at the exact same time, buyers purchase the next home with a smaller down payment. Then, after their current home sells, they apply those proceeds to the new mortgage and “recast” the loan. In plain English, the payment gets recalculated and adjusted lower after they apply the sale proceeds.
No refinance. No starting over with a brand-new loan. Just a lower monthly payment after the sale closes.
Like most things in real estate, having the right lender involved early matters. Some loan officers work with these strategies all the time. Others rarely do. The difference can matter quite a bit.
“A clean offer still wins more often than the highest offer.”
And that’s really what all of this comes down to. In the end, most of this is simply about giving yourself more ways to make the move work. It gives buyers a chance to make a cleaner, more confident offer when the right house finally comes along.
Financing, though, is only part of this conversation. How the offer is structured matters too. Contingent offers got a bad reputation during the heavy seller-market years because sellers simply didn’t have to deal with them. But before that? They were common. For a large part of my career, agents worked through these situations all the time. There are ways to structure them so sellers still feel protected and the deal still makes sense. Not every situation calls for it, but there are absolutely times when contingent offers can work if everything is lined up properly ahead of time.
If you think there’s even a chance you’ll move in the next year or two, this is the kind of planning worth doing before the pressure is on. Most people make better decisions when they’re not under the gun. And the smoothest moves usually happen when the financing, timing, and strategy were figured out before the pressure showed up.
Scott Gaertner is an Associate Broker with Keller Williams Arizona Realty and a 35-year Scottsdale North expert. He’s helped thousands of people find their ideal lifestyle and shares local insights on ConnectingScottsdaleNorth.com. For more information, visit scottgaertnergroup.com or call 480-634-5000.
