Trying to buy a home while selling your current home can be challenging; however, one of the best options you have for this is adding a contingency to the purchase offer on the house you choose to buy. This contingency would say that, in order for your purchase to go through, the seller of the house would have to agree to wait for you to sell your current home. If this sounds like a good deal to you, there are a few things you should understand before you do this.
Sellers can say no
When you make a purchase offer with this type of contingency, the seller can always say no to your offer. Sellers would be more likely to say no if any of the following conditions exist:
- They are in a hurry to sell their home.
- The person making the offer has not even listed their home yet.
- The home that must sell first is overpriced or has major issues.
If you want to make an offer on contingency, you will need to make sure that you are doing all you can to try to sell your home. Your home must be listed on the market already, it must be priced right, and it must be attractive for people looking for a home. If you take these steps, a seller is more likely to accept your offer on contingency.
There will be time frames
When a seller accepts an offer with this type of contingency, he or she will not be able to sell the house to anyone else during the time frame listed on your purchase offer. This basically means that the seller is taking a huge risk. If your house doesn't sell, the deal falls through. Because of this, sellers are more likely to agree to contingency offers when there are realistic time frames attached. For example, if you add a time frame of 60 days, this would be considered realistic, and the seller may agree to it more quickly than if you had listed 180 days on the offer.
The seller may add a kick-out clause
There is one other thing you should know if you want to make a contingent offer like this, and this involves something called a kick-out (or bump-out) clause. If a seller agrees to your offer but adds a kick-out clause, it will state that he or she could accept other offers on the home during the contingency period. If this happens, you would be given a few days to drop the contingency from your offer; otherwise, you would lose the deal. The seller would then sell the house to the other person that made an offer on it.
Selling a house can take time, and finding the right house to buy can also take time. If you have questions about selling or buying homes for sale, call a real estate agency today.
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