How to Buy Before You Sell in Licking County, Ohio
This is the hardest problem in real estate, and I get asked about it constantly.
You own a house. You want a different one. Your down payment is locked up in the house you're standing in. And the house you want isn't going to wait around while you sort that out.
Here's the honest breakdown of your options.
Option 1: Sell first, then buy
The cleanest financially, the most stressful practically.
You sell, you have cash in hand, and you're a strong non-contingent buyer. Sellers love you.
The catch: you may not have anywhere to live. That means negotiating a rent-back from your buyer, arranging temporary housing, or moving twice. In a market where the right house appears unpredictably, "I'll find something in 30 days" is a real gamble.
Best for: people with flexibility on housing, or a rent-back option, or family nearby.
Option 2: Buy with a home sale contingency
You make an offer contingent on your current house selling.
The catch: your offer is meaningfully weaker. If a seller has two offers and one is contingent, the contingent one usually loses — and in a competitive situation it may not get considered at all.
Best for: slower markets, longer-listed properties, or situations where your offer is strong enough on other terms to overcome it.
Option 3: Bridge financing or an equity advance
There are programs that let you access equity in your current home to buy the next one before it sells.
Howard Hanna's Buy Before You Sell program is designed for exactly this — it advances a portion of your current home's appraised value toward the next purchase. [VERIFY: current terms, advance percentage, and eligibility — confirm with Howard Hanna Mortgage Services before publishing. Restrictions apply and terms change.]
The advantage is real: you make a non-contingent offer, which puts you in a completely different negotiating position.
The considerations are also real: there are costs, qualifying requirements, and you're carrying two properties for a period.
Best for: people with meaningful equity who are competing for a specific house.
Option 4: Rent it out
Not right for everyone, but worth mentioning. If your current home would rent for more than it costs you to hold, keeping it as an investment is a legitimate path.
Requires qualifying for the new mortgage while carrying the old one, and requires genuinely wanting to be a landlord — which not everyone does, and that's fine.
There's also a program for renters
If you're currently in an apartment and stuck in a lease, Howard Hanna has an Apartment Dwellers Trade-In program that addresses the lease-break problem. [VERIFY: current terms with broker.]
How I actually approach this
There's no universal right answer. It depends on your equity, your income, your risk tolerance, and honestly your stress tolerance — some people handle uncertainty fine and some don't, and that's a legitimate factor.
What I'd do is sit down and run the actual numbers on two or three of these paths so you can see them side by side. Not to talk you into anything. Just so the decision is made with real information rather than anxiety.
This is also the conversation where I most often tell someone to wait six months. Sometimes the answer is that the timing isn't right yet, and that's genuinely useful to know.
