One of the most important things to remember is that selling your old home and buying a new one is part of a single process. Get a handle on the process and you can control it—and profit from it. Most of us operate on a linear track. We put one foot before another, we put our pants on one leg at a time, we start at the beginning and move to the end. But that’s not always the best way to operate. Let’s consider selling an existing home and buying a new one. Operating on a linear time line, we’d follow these seven steps in order:
Sound familiar? This is the way that most people go about handling the buy/sell process. A number of things are wrong with progressing in a linear fashion.
A juggler keeps a lot of balls in the air at the same time without dropping them. In short, the juggler doesn’t simply do one thing after another, but more or less does all things at once. You need to be a bit of a juggler when you’re involved in the buy/sell process. You need to do lots of things more or less at the same time. Just putting one foot after another won’t do. You’ve got to handle a variety of things almost simultaneously. You need to become a property juggler. Here are some of the steps you’ll need to accomplish, although not necessarily in this order: Make an offer on a new property. List your old home. Work with an agent on both buying and selling. Get pre-approved financing. Fix up your existing home. Make arrangements for furniture transfer. Survive and prosper!
Is It Possible to Do It All at Once?
Of course not. But once you get started you can work on all of it more or less simultaneously. After all, even a juggler who keeps six balls in the air doesn’t get them all up there at the same time. Successful jugglers throw each ball up one at a time, and keep them going. You’re going to do the same thing. In an orderly fashion, you’re going to get one thing started. And while that’s ”up in the air,” or you’re in process, you’re going to get started on another. Then, while you are juggling two, you’ll work on starting the third, and so on until you have all of the balls in the air at the same time. Isn’t that impossible? Not really, particularly because none of the things you’ll need to do will require constant attention. You just need to get them started and then, while you wait for them to work their way along until more attention is needed, you can work on another project. In this way, you can get all things done, more or less, simultaneously.