Buying a new home before selling the old one can feel like solving a puzzle while someone keeps moving the pieces. The new house may look perfect, the seller may want a quick closing, and suddenly the comfortable little plan of “sell first, then buy” starts looking painfully inconvenient.
The catch involves more than owning two sets of keys. A buyer may need to qualify for the new mortgage while still carrying the old one, come up with money for the new purchase before receiving proceeds from the old sale, and manage the possibility that the old house takes longer to sell than expected. That does not make the strategy impossible, but it does make the financial math much more important than the excitement of finding the perfect kitchen.
