The money may be there. Getting it into the next closing, qualifying for the loan, and surviving the overlap are three different problems.

Good morning, NREB readers.

Your client has found the next house. They have substantial equity in the current one. They would rather move once, settle in, and sell the old home after it is empty.

“We’ll use the equity for the down payment. Can we make the offer?”

That sounds like a financing question. For the agent handling the move, it is also a sequencing question with two transactions attached.

Consider this illustrative household. Their current home is expected to sell for $550,000, and they owe approximately $350,000. That is $200,000 of gross equity.

Their next home costs $650,000. A 10% down payment is $65,000, and the assumed closing costs and prepaid items add $15,000. They need $80,000 for the purchase.

They have $60,000 in liquid savings.

Once the current home sells, there should be enough money. Before it sells, they are $20,000 short of the purchase cash alone, before preserving an emergency cushion or paying to move.

A bridge loan might provide the missing funds. But obtaining cash against one property does not automatically qualify the client to borrow against the next.

In our worked example, the household’s monthly debts would consume approximately 43% of qualifying gross income after the old home and bridge loan are paid off.

While both homes and the bridge loan count, that ratio rises to approximately 68%.

The household has the same income and the same houses in both calculations. What changes is which obligations remain, and which the lender must count.

There is a useful qualification exception for certain documented pending sales. But even when a payment can be excluded from the lender’s calculation, the client still has to pay it until the debt is actually settled.

That is where a promising move can become uncomfortable: the down payment is available, the lender may be satisfied, and the household is still spending thousands each month waiting for its sale to close.

Zillow’s 2026 seller research, released October 14, found that among people who both sold and bought, 59% sold first, 27% bought first, and 14% did both at or around the same time.

Among seller-buyers who used an agent, 81% reported using the same agent for both transactions.

Those findings do not tell us which sequence is right for a particular household. They do show why the conversation belongs early in the relationship. The client needs help connecting the sale to the purchase, including what happens when the dates do not cooperate.

Before encouraging a buy-first offer, separate three questions:

Can they fund the purchase? Can they qualify while the old home remains? Can they carry the overlap if the sale takes longer?

A “yes” to one does not answer the others.

Below, we work through the $75,000 bridge proposal, the documentation that can change the qualification result, the cash remaining after three or six months, and the alternatives when buying first does not hold up. There is also language for the client and lender, plus a reusable move-planning worksheet.