BUYING AND SELLING IN SARASOTA
Buying your new Sarasota home often involves selling another, a juggling act that takes a lot of planning and a little luck to move along perfectly. Most folks cannot afford to carry two house payments on their budgets and need to sell their current residence in order to have a sufficient down payment on the next one.
It is not uncommon to begin house-hunting before you've sold your current home. You may then find the perfect next home before the one you're living in is sold. When you make an offer, you can request a contingency based on the sale of your current home. Sellers often don't like this type of contingency because if you can't sell your house, you won't be buying theirs, which will then have been off the market and out of circulation. In a hot market such as Sarasota most seller will not currently accept this contingency. They don't have to, another buyer is standing right behind you. On the other hand, if the home you have your eye on has been on the market for a while or is vacant, the seller may be willing to take your offer.
One sort of compromise is the 72-hour release (or a time frame that the buyer and seller agree upon) clause that's often included in the language of the contingency to offer some protection to the seller. This clause allows the seller to keep their property on the market despite your offer. In the event they get another offer, they can accept it as the back-up. The seller then contacts you and gives you 72 hours (or however long you've agreed upon) to remove the contingency on your offer. If you do that and proceed with the purchase of the house, it's yours. Or you can decline, cancel the contract altogether and the next buyers proceed.
The down side for contingent sale buyers is you can lose the house you hoped to buy. One way to avoid getting caught in this dilemma is to make your offer, contingent on the sale of your current home and then set a time frame within which you will sell your house, say three or four weeks. This can work if you have a highly marketable property, in great shape, in a good location and you've priced it to sell.
In this scenario, the home you want to buy will be sale pending while you make every effort to sell your house and line up financing and inspection for the one you hope to move into. If, in the end, you still haven't sold your home, the sellers will put their property back on the market.
Your best bet when purchasing a home in the Sarasota market is to place your current home for sale prior to looking for your new Sarasota home. Another options is to build new. As little as 10% down will start the process with most builders and you'll have a year or more to sell your current home.
