Buying/Selling a House. Need Imput! Long and Rambling.

[Virgo10]

I've never done both at the same time. I've sold a house and moved to an apartment and left an apartment and bought a house. Now we are planning a move to Florida which will involve both selling our home here and buying one there. This whole thing is starting to remind me of which came first... the chicken or the egg.

Anyone here who's done this (and it doesn't have to involve a move to Florida ), what did you do first? Our plan is for me to go to Florida right after we put our house on the market. We're in a very desirable area and most homes here are sold within 5 days! I'm going to spend a week down there looking, looking, looking! Well I may take a night or two off and head into the parks too.

From what I've seen online, there is no shortage of homes to look at in the price range we've got to work with. I've got a real estate agent in Orlando that I've worked with before. Would you deal with more than one agent or do they all have access to everything that's available?

We may end up selling this house and then having to rent it from the new owners for a month or so. How long did it take you to finalize the sale of the house on both the buying and selling end. It would seem like you'd have to sell first and then use that money to buy the house you're moving to. Will I end up making a second trip down there to finalize the sale before the actual move?

All information would be most helpful but especially facts and figures from those of you who have moved to Florida from far away.

Roberta

 

[floridafam]

This won't help much but, we are also moving to Florida.

Our house is going on the market tomorrow. We are hoping for a quick sale and a quick close. I will probably stay up here to close while DH goes to Florida to get settled.

We pre-qualified ourselves with a mortgage broker in Florida and have started to look at some homes. Most new construction is taking 8 months to a year so we will rent a townhome until we can get into a house.

It's so hard to know exactly what will happen.

We are planning on selling first and using some of the equity from the sale for the down payment on the new house. We are not interested in doing a "bridge" loan.

You may have to go back down to Florida to close on the new house. We were told we could close by overnight mail so that may be an option for you.

Good luck.

 

[Virgo10]

Originally posted by floridafam
This won't help much but, we are also moving to Florida.

Our house is going on the market tomorrow. We are hoping for a quick sale and a quick close. I will probably stay up here to close while DH goes to Florida to get settled.

We pre-qualified ourselves with a mortgage broker in Florida and have started to look at some homes. Most new construction is taking 8 months to a year so we will rent a townhome until we can get into a house.

It's so hard to know exactly what will happen.

We are planning on selling first and using some of the equity from the sale for the down payment on the new house. We are not interested in doing a "bridge" loan.

You may have to go back down to Florida to close on the new house. We were told we could close by overnight mail so that may be an option for you.

Good luck.

Thanks so much for the reply. We'll be paying for the house in FL with the profits from the sale of our house here. Building is not an option as I want to be able to and have to be able to (we have LOTS of cats) move directly from here to there.

This is a very exciting time but also very stressful as I'm sure you know. While homes in my neighborhood are selling nearly as fast as they're listed, I'm still afraid we'll be the exception rather than the rule. Still we are determined to make this move and I can't wait. I'm hoping that last winter really was my LAST winter in Massachusetts!

Roberta

 

[floridafam]

I understand. Home are selling really fast here, also. We still worry that ours will sit and sit.

It's perfectly normal to rent from the new owners for a while as long as they don't want to be in the house right away.

The normal closing up here iss 30 days. We are going to take whatever is offered. If someone makes an offer and they want to be in sooner than that, that's fine with us.

Let me know how everything goes for you. I'm so excited about moving to Florida, I want to leave now.

 

[SC Minnie]

6 years ago we decided to move but only about 45 miles away (closer to work). We found a house that was perfect for us, made an offer and it was accepted. We then put our other house on the market. I was a nervous wreck worrying about whether it would sell fast enough. We had an offer in 2 days. We ended up closing on the new house then a week later closing on the old one. It gave us plenty of time to move out.

 

[Talking Hands]

Any realtor you work with will have access to all listings but as a buyer you are allowed to work with more than one. Remember that you can possible get in trouble if more than one realtor shows you the same property and you end up wanting to buy it and put in a contract. First one who shows it is the one entitled to the commission and you should go back to him to write the contract.
Most closing can take upwards of 2 months to close. It can be done faster but don't count on it. You can make the closing contingent on the sale of your current home. That way you will not be paying 2 mortgages at the same time.
Be real careful with the title company. We have had some real problems down here with some of them. If you want details PM me and I will explain privately but it may be a couple of days as I am off to a convention until Sat late.
Remember that you may need up to 3 policies for insurance. (reg, flood and windstorm) One insurance agent should be able to write all of them for you. You will need a certificate of elevation on the house, should be in the survey of the property. Don't forget inspections needed. Remember anything and everything can be negotiable. GET YOU OWN REAL ESTATE ATTORNEY! One in each state.

 

[dvcgirl]

Well, we just moved from New Jersey to Orlando. Here's what we did.

We came down here in February and met up with a realtor who we found on-line. We had three areas of Orlando that we wanted to look at. I think you really need to know which part of Orlando you'd like to live in. We chose SW Orlando in general and looked at Hunter's Creek, Windermere and MetroWest/Dr Phillips. So initially there were *tons* of houses for us to look at. But once we came down here we found that Hunter's Creek and Windermere wouldn't work for us. So all of the sudden we had only a few houses that fit our criteria. We did some stuff we really liked though. We left Orlando, made the decision to put our house on the market and sold it in seven days. Our closing date was set so we figured we'd start searching for a home in Orlando.

We discovered very quickly that it's really hard to buy something down here while still living in NJ. First of all, by the time many of the houses hit realtor.com, they're already under contract. The market down here is just as crazy as it is in the northeast and houses go very quickly. You'll definitely have to be under contract at a minimum on the house you're selling or most sellers down here won't even look at you. Demand is high here and supply is low, so sellers can be very choosy.

We decided that the best thing to do would be to close on our house in NJ and rent temporarily down here until we found a house. We ended up driving by a house For Sale By Owner the first day we arrived. We made an appointment to see if a couple of days later. The next day we went out to look at homes in our target area with our realtor. He only had *two* houses to show us. We couldn't believe how the inventory in the area had dropped. He told us it had dropped by 50% since February.

Well, we went to see the FSBO house the next day and loved it. We made an offer almost immediately. We're really glad we did because five weeks later there hasn't been one house that has come on the market that would work for us.