Should you sell or buy first? James shares his strategy!

Summary

Join James Loewen on 'Smarter, Not Harder' as he tackles the classic dilemma - should you buy or sell your home first? Learn how to mitigate market risks, understand the implications of your decisions, and make strategic moves in the property market to work smarter with your assets.

Transcript

James Loewen:

Picture a magical place, an island where financial literacy was ubiquitous. You were born with all that information. Where home prices were guaranteed to sell. You could pick your closing date and your purchase dates to be the exact date if you wanted to, and you knew with certainty exact information. What would be call such a magical place? Since that doesn't exist, guys, I'm James Loewen. Let's get going. What we're going to be talking today, should we be buying or selling first? This is Smarter, Not Harder.

All right, guys. So we're going to talk about should I buy first or should I sell first? The answer lies in your butt. Where do you want to see your butt sitting? So let's talk about a couple scenarios here, between buying and selling first. The market I recognize recently has been very much a seller's market. So the fear has been if I sell, I won't be able to buy. Okay, well, where are you going to find yourself? Your butt's probably going to be sitting on a whole bunch of cash, you're probably going to have to keep your stuff in storage for a bit, and your butt might be at your in-laws house, a rental, or at a hotel. Not so horrible to have your butt, sounds actually pretty comfy, cozy.

Now, what happens if you buy and you can't sell? Now where's your butt going to be? Well, it's going to be in a breach of contract. You might be thinking to yourself, wow, I'm going to be potentially losing my deposit. You actually might be losing a heck a lot more than that. Whatever the additional costs are to sell that house now, from what your agreement was, you're going to be liable for. In the most recent cases closed in BC, well over 300,000 had to be paid out. So it's a very big common misnomer that deposits all you're going to lose.

So where would I be standing? Guys, whatever you can do to mitigate that market risk, i.e. try to buy and sell as close as you can together, is going to help. If I had to give you recommendation, you sell first. We will now know exactly which money we're going to have, accuracy for down payment, all the proceeds, what are the closing dates, and we're going to keep your butt out of the courthouse of being in breach of contract.

I'm James Loewen. I've got your butt covered, so now it's not showing. This is Smarter, Not Harder.