The Power of Leverage: Navigating Home Buying and Selling Simultaneously

Host: Welcome to Market Matters with WVMLS, where we get real about real estate in the Willamette Valley. I’m Dave Pautsch of RE/MAX Integrity. Our local Willamette Valley Multiple Listing Service, or WVMLS, is a powerful but often misunderstood resource. It’s the centralized marketplace bringing buyers and sellers together since 1949.

Today, we’re continuing our series for buyers with an important topic: buying a home when you also have a home to sell. Creating the right strategy here means how contingencies affect your negotiating leverage. Contingencies protect your time, your money, and your peace of mind. Having a home to sell before you can buy is a contingency. Needing to find a home before you can close on your home sale is also a contingency.

Finding that home you love and needing to sell your home impacts your leverage on both sides of the transaction. You lose leverage both as a seller because you need to get the house sold so you don’t lose the one you want to buy, but you’re also giving up leverage as a buyer because it is an additional risk to the seller.

Ideally, selling your current home, then renting while you’re out hunting for that next home is the best leverage situation. So, should you list your home and get it under contract before making an offer on your next home? Or is it better to get your next home in contract and then list? The answer depends on both your wants and needs for the new home and how difficult that will be to find in the market. Are you looking for a common three-bed, two-bath single-story? Or are you looking for something much harder to find?

On the other side of the equation is the question of how quickly your home might sell. This is where your WVMLS member real estate professional is the key. Their understanding of the market can help you balance these two questions and assist you in creating the most effective strategy to maximize your leverage.

Thanks for joining us for Market Matters with WVMLS where we get real about real estate in the Willamette Valley. I’m Dave Pautsch of RE/MAX Integrity. We’ll be back next week in the noon hour with more information on how WVMLS makes the market work for buyers.

Until then, learn more at wvmls.com.