Old house sells before new house is ready-ever happened to you?

[snoopy30]

DH and I are building a new house which *should* be done in the fall. Very exciting of course but it also creates a tricky scenario. What if the house we are currently in sells before our new house is ready? Has this ever happened to anyone and if so what did you do? Move to an apartment? Move in with friends/family? All of it sounds like a pain w/ a toddler!

The opposite scenario of course is NOT selling our current house in time and then having to carry two mortgages :eek: Either way there is an issue.

Of course we would probably only consider an earlier closing date on our current house if the offer was just too good to pass up.

Thanks for any advice/input!

[May27JnJ]

DH and I just sold our old house, moved in with my parents this past weekend and are living there until the 16th or so. Our "stuff" is in my ILs 2 car garage. It took up the entire thing! We don't have children and we're not building, but we're doing it.

[lml41981]

Yup...this happened to us. We put our house on the market in October 2005 a few weeks after putting money down on a new build. We got a good offer (can't beat an offer where the woman says, "I don't want an inspection...I'll take it in as-is condition!"), but contingent upon the sale of her condo, within two weeks of putting the house on the market. She ended up working her financing so that her offer was not contingent. Meanwhile, our house wasn't going to be done until January, at the earliest...it ended up taking until the middle of February. We pushed back the closing on our old house until January 25, which was fine with her because she didn't have to make two mortgage payments and rent and was fine with us because it gave us that much more time to have a place to live. We were going to book an extended stay hotel and store all our stuff, but it worked out that we were able to rent-back from the 25th until February 15, which was the day we closed on the new house. That was a hectic day, for sure, but it all worked out!

[Winter Biscuit]

Yep, it happened to us.

DH took a new job in a different city which required us to put our house up for sale and move. He got a full relocation package, so if our house didn't sell within 90 days, his company would have bought it from us.

Anyway, DH started working at his new job in January. It was 1.5 hours from our house so he stayed with his sister several nights a week and only came home for weekends and then 1 week night.

Our house sold after 2 months on the market (March). We bought a house (new construction) that was scheduled to be completed in mid-March. The house was not done in mid-March; builder gave us a new completion date of early May. The people who bought our house were closing at the end of April. We tried to negotiate with the buyers to let us continue living there and rent from them for a week or two, but they said no - they wanted to move at the end of April and that was all there was to it.

Long story short...we moved out of our house on a Thursday and the new owners moved in the same day they closed (2 days later - a Saturday). DD (who was 15 months old at the time) and I moved in with my parents for several weeks. (My parents live in a 2-bedroom condo, so let's just say it was...cozy.) DH continued living with his sister and her family several nights a week and only came home on weekends and 1 weeknight. All our furniture and most of our belongings stayed in storage with the moving company for several weeks (paid for via the relo package). We basically lived out of suitcases for several weeks and if something was in storage - too bad - we couldnt' get it until we moved into our new home.

Our house was supposed to be done in early May. It wasn't. Then it was supposed to be done May 15. It wasn't.

We moved into our new home in late May (Thursday before Memorial Day weekend), and the house still wasn't done, but we moved in anyway since we had already arranged for the moving company to deliver all our stuff from storage and we were sick of living in temporary quarters and hearing the builder's sorry excuses. (We hoped that moving in would light a fire under his ass and get him to complete the house faster. In a way, it did...although it wasn't fun having contractors coming and going all day long when we were living there.) In fact, we moved in before we had even closed on the house and had all the final inspections.

It was a very crazy few months - but it all worked out in the end.

[MrsBeckyLP]

DH and I have our house on the market right now, and we'll probably break ground on our home in early May. We put the house on the market early with the realization that we'd probably sell early (while also hoping for a late closing date or that we wouldn't sell until later). If we sell before our house is done (probably late August), we'll move into an apartment. We don't have any family in the area, and I'd feel uncomfortable asking friends to take us in for a while.

We'd much rather have the hassle of moving into an apartment than worry about having two mortgages!

[penybryn]

We sold our house in October, after about 6 months on the market. We hadn't found another house yet. I was worried about our buyer really getting to close, as she had extra bad credit. Everything turned out fine and we closed on our agreed upon date.

We threw a ton away and kept only our essentials. We put everything in storage. Moved in with my mother in law, with husband, 2 kids, 2 cats and a dog in tow. She has lots of room but it was still really hard!

We found a house in December, closed in January but didn't move in until the end of March. We spent a few months updating the place (check out our redo on the before and after thread).

Would I do that again? Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!:ee k:

[coquelicot]

I haven't had it happen to me, but it did to a co-worker. They hadn't even broken ground on their new homesite yet when their existing house sold. Someone bought their house even before it was officially on the market. They're now living in a townhouse with just their bare essentials (the rest in storage) until they can get their new house completed. I know it's a pain in the neck for them, but at least they won't have to stress about 2 mortgages.

[Secret_Squirrel]

I've done this before and I'll (hopefully) be doing it again in a few months.

Our new house has a completion date of 9/1/07. We plan on putting our existing house on the market in two weeks. If it sells quickly, we'll just have to work it out one way or another. We'll move in with family or throw everything in storage and move into a residence-type hotel. It probably won't be long enough for an apartment, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

It'll work out. Think of it as an adventure.

[~queen~]

We've been through it twice with both of our new construction homes. They are never finished on time!

Anyway's both times we stayed at an Extended Stay Hotel. It works out really well because we moved our stuff to a POD and didn't have to worry about anything more than just our day-to-day stuff and doing any major packing/unpacking like if we would have put our stuff in storage.

It cost a bit more than a hotel, but not having to rely on other people or invading their space, plus the free breakfast and dinners on the weekdays, definitely helped! And, in the end we got so many hotel bonus points that we were able to take a nice vacation!

[muguet27]

It just happened to us. We put our house on the market & had an offer within the week. We totally weren't expecting that! So, last weekend we moved in with my grandma. We'll probably be there 6 months or so until our new house is finished (and ground hasn't been broken yet). So far it's going OK - we only brought the stuff we'd need until fall & stored most of our other stuff & furniture in my FILs barn.