How do you buy a house before selling your current one?
Five arrangements do the work: an offer written with a home sale contingency, bridge financing against the current house, a home equity line opened before you list, a buy-before-you-sell program, and selling first while renting the house back from your buyer. They all solve the same problem, which is getting into the next house without the sale proceeds in hand, and every one of them charges for it somewhere.
None of them changes what you can afford or what your house is worth. They bridge the window between two closings by moving risk onto someone: the seller you are buying from, a lender, a company taking a fee, or you.
What does a home sale contingency do here?
It is a clause in your offer that makes the purchase depend on your current home selling. If your home does not sell inside the window the contract sets, you can cancel without losing your deposit. It is the cheapest route on the list because writing a clause costs nothing. It is also the one a seller is most likely to refuse, since it hangs their closing on a sale they cannot see or control. The mechanics, and what makes one version easier for a seller to accept than another, are in what a home sale contingency is and does to your offer.
What is bridge financing?
Bridge financing is a short-term loan secured by the equity in your current home, used for the down payment on the next one and repaid when the old house closes. It turns a contingent offer into an ordinary one, which is the entire point of it. The cost comes in three parts: closing costs to set the loan up, interest for as long as both properties are on your books, and an underwriting standard that assumes you might carry both payments for a while. Terms and availability vary widely by lender and by state, and some lenders will not write one until the current home is listed or already under contract.
Can you use a home equity line instead?
A HELOC does a similar job and is usually cheaper to set up, with one hard constraint attached: you generally have to open it before you list. Once a house is on the market or under contract, most lenders will not originate a line against it, and some freeze a line that already exists. That makes it the option with the earliest deadline of the five. If a line of credit is part of your plan, it is a conversation with a lender before the sign goes in the yard, not after. What you can draw, how repayment works, and whether that payment counts against you when you qualify for the next mortgage are all lender-specific answers.
How do buy-before-you-sell programs work?
These are companies that let you make a non-contingent or cash-backed offer on the next house and then handle or guarantee the sale of the old one. The structures are not the same. Some buy your current home outright at an agreed number. Some fund the purchase and then sell your old house on the open market afterward. Some only guarantee a backstop offer if it does not sell on its own.
All of them charge for the service, and how they charge is the part to read closely: a program fee, a spread on the sale price, rent while you occupy the new house before closing, or some combination. Two questions separate these programs from each other better than any pitch does. What happens if the old house sells for less than the guaranteed number, and what happens if it takes longer than the program's window.
What about renting back from your buyer?
Rent-back is the inverse move and it belongs here because it closes the same gap. You sell, you close, and then you stay in the house as a tenant for an agreed period while you close on the next one. Your proceeds are in hand, your offer on the next house is clean, and you move once instead of twice.
The limits are that your buyer has to agree, their lender may cap how long a seller can stay after closing, and the arrangement is a written agreement with its own rent, deposit, insurance, and liability questions. That one deserves an attorney's eyes before you sign it.
Who decides which one fits?
Your lender settles most of it. What you can qualify for while still owning the current home is the constraint every other option is built around, and that answer comes before shopping, not after. Your agent knows how contingent offers are actually being received where you are buying and what possession terms sellers there will sign. Anything with a contract attached, a rent-back, a program agreement, a contingency with a kick-out clause, belongs in front of a real estate attorney first.
The Move Path Finder routes the question sitting above all of this: whether your situation calls for selling first, buying first, prepping the house, or staying put. Five questions in, a brief you can hand to an agent out. It is qualitative and it does not evaluate your finances or produce any numbers, so it does not replace the lender conversation. It is one of the buyer-decision tools in the Rethink catalog.