What If I Sell My Home, But I’m Not Able To Find A New One To Buy?

This is a common question especially in a busy real estate market where there are more sellers than buyers. This is also, quite honestly, a good question for a seller to ask. Make sure your real estate agent has a good answer, and if they don’t, find a new real estate agent.

There is one main, most common, way to make sure you do not sell your home without having a new one and end up homeless: make your sale contingent on your finding a suitable replacement home. In other words, you will not officially sell your home without having found a new one to move into.

In the scenario where you make your sale contingent on your finding a new home, the buyer will respond with one of three options: 1) they may just say “no” and not agree to the contingency (remember this is a negotiation) 2) they may agree to the contingency but give a deadline to your new search – meaning they could agree but say if you have not found a new home in 30 days (or however long they choose) then your sale contract will be automatically terminated or 3) they could agree to an open-ended contingency meaning you literally can take as long as you need to find a new place. In all honesty, if #3 happens, the buyer does not have a good real estate agent representing them.

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Another protection is to ask for a rent back from the buyer once you sell your home. For example, you sell your home on May 15 but the buyer has already agreed to allow you to rent back from the new owner for up to 90 days so you can find a new home. The rent you would owe is typically determined by the amount of the new owner’s mortgage divided by 30 – that’s the daily rental rate.

So bottom line, there are multiple ways to protect you from selling without having found a new home to buy. Most importantly, make sure you have a good real estate agent representing you. As in all matters real estate, a good agent is your best protection.