Selling current house, and buying another one....QUESTIONS
 

Hopefully within the next few months, I will be moving. When we bought the house we currently live in, we were renting, so we did not have to worry about using the profit from an existing house for the down payment on our new house. This time, we have to deal with this situation though. We will need to use most of the equity in our current house, as the down payment on our new house.

For those that have done this before, how did you handle it? Being in California, I am afraid if we make an offer on a new house contingent upon selling our current house, that the seller will not want to deal with it. Why wouldn't they just take an offer from someone else, without such a contingency? So...if we find a house we want to buy, BEFORE we find a buyer for our current house, what should we do? Should we get a "bridge" loan to use for the downpayment, until we sell our current house? Or should we use a home equity line of credit, instead of a bridge loan?

On the other hand, if we find a buyer for our current house, before we find a new house, I guess the best thing to do is make the escrow period as long as we can, to give us ample time to find a new house? Or I have also heard of people renting the house they just sold from the new owners, while they look for a new house.

Any insights on this would be appreciated.

Unless you can carry both houses, you must make
 

it contingent.

However, you can modify the contingency stating you have the option if notified that somebody else is making a noncontingent offer to remove the contingency within a certain time. That can appease both parties.

That is a good idea, if we go the contingency route...
 

What about using a HELOC or bridge loan for the down payment though? This way we would not have to make the offer contingent on selling our house.

Re: That is a good idea, if we go the contingency route...
 

That's what I'd do. Nobody up here will even look at a contingency offer. There's no reason to when they can sell it to someone else the same day.