I think most people use PODS now for your situation. They leave the pod and move it to their facility. They bring the pod(s) when you are ready for your stuff. Brilliant idea, IMHO.

The first thing to figure out is where you are going to live immediately after your house is sold. That will drive a lot of the decisions you make.

Are you going to try to buy a place after your house is under contract? Or are you going to wait until after you close to sign a contract to buy?

Hi
It isn't a stupid question-coordinating moves is difficult but it can be done. What we have always done is after our house is listed, we start maintaining a list of properties we are interested in the new area. Once our house has an offer and after it passes the home inspection, we then look at houses that our still available from our list. We generally spend an extended weekend looking at houses all day. When we make an offer on the new house we give them a closing date very soon after the closing date on the house we just sold. It is stressful but it is better than some other options. We do this with 3 kids, 3 cats and salt water fish and so far in the past 4 moves it has worked very well. the last move we had to spend 3 nights in a hotel, but that was due to the fact that the closing dates were in between a holiday and you had to wait a couple days for occupancy. That was probably the most stressful move. We used U-pack service, so it took our stuff 5 days to get to another state, we didn't have a problem with what to do with it in the meantime. We did have to sleep in sleeping bags the first night at our new house though. This system has worked well for us anyhow.

Sorry, but your question made me laugh- I just did the same thing moving 1200 miles with pets and a handicapped relative. We did purchase our new home (on a contingency) before the old one sold, so that was added stress, but it can be done. I did all my new house shopping online and bought sight unseen although local relatives did check it out and provided me with 100's of high resolution photos of every inch of the property.

The key in my case was to get organized and stay that way. I had a notebook with sections "selling FL house", "buying KY house", "services FL", "services KY", "actual move" involving truck and car rentals and hotels and so on. Keeping all the phone numbers, FAX numbers, and notes in one place helped tremendously.

We also did use a POD to store items while our old house was being shown, but unfortunately PODS did not deliver where we were moving, so I had to transfer all that stuff over to a rental truck when we were ready to go.
I hired KY drivers to fly down to FL and drive my rental truck so the husband and I could each be free to drive a car- he drove with his Mom and I drove with the pets with separate hotels along the way to limit the stress.

We had a weeks wait to get possession of our new home which we solved with a combination of hotels and relatives- I refuse to board my pets so this was my only option.

It is a huge task- the only way I made it through was to look at one thing at a time- the storage stage, the selling stage, the closing stage, the moving out stage, the driving stage, the moving in stage etc. All at once it is simply too much to undertake but when you look at it one stage at a time it becomes manageable. Every time a step was completed I gained confidence in my planning and began to realize that it all just might work. We are now two weeks in our new home and still can't fathom how it all came together and worked in the end.

So plan, plan, plan, stay organized, and be flexible to changes because problems will crop up. I have to say that selling the old house was 99% of the stress involved in the whole situation- once you see the light at the end of the tunnel in that regard everything else is easy.
Relatively :)

The short answer is "you dont".

You need to either have a rental in place, closed on the new home or work out an arrangement with your buyer so that you can rent from them.

First thing you can start doing now is packing. Maybe you can put non essential items in your garage or in storage.
Once you have a signed contract on the property you are selling, you can find an apt or rental if you plan to do that. Find a place with a short term lease and garages so you can keep a lot of your non essentials and furniture in storage.

Once you buy and close on your new home, you move out of the rental.

We also used PODS for a previous move, and loved it. It worked out perfectly for us. I'd buy stock in the PODS company if it were available. If you call them they'll explain how it works. I forget their web site, but a search on google will find it for you.

Gardenweb Folks - You're the best! Thank you for all the great ideas. I am not able to answer individually at this minute, but I see there are many ways to do this.

Some people plan to rent first, some people coordinate this to all come together like a puzzle, for others it is very stressful. Basically, you all have succeeded in your varying approaches. I guess I was worried that I would have to deal with the moving out and closing, the cats, the movers, the drive, the closing and moving in ALL AT ONCE. I see that things are staggered, and storing the possessions, or renting with pets is doable while waiting for the new house to be bought or found. I will have to be flexible, and expect the inconvenience of being separated from my stuff, and/or separated from my residence. As long as I can be there for the cats during the transition.

Another vote for PODS here.

We moved last year (about 1000 miles), and packed all of our stuff in 2 PODS. We then stayed in an extended stay hotel for about 2 weeks while waiting for our new house to close. A day later PODS delivered to the new home...very easy and no worries about a U-Haul breaking down on the road. We got movers for loading/unloading our big stuff out of the PODS too. (I think we used emove or something like that...they are on the U-Haul website.)

Good luck with the transition!

If you do a search on moving somewhere there is a website who's name I can remember about moving. There have been complaints recently about PODS.
ABF trucking seems to be the favorite, they have a "U-PACK" service that includes a small pod or a truck trailer. The pod option is similar to PODS. My nephew just used it moving from Portland to Michigan. They drop it off, you load it, the drop it off, you unload it. Or for less money they take it their nearest facility (which may not be that close) and you unload it from there.

I too have a sprial binder with little labeled tabs sticking out. I am in the process of calling self-storage places to get pricing, looking for moving labor (I've used a Temorary Labor once to good affect), calling apt places etc. I'm not sure what I'm doing and probably won't till the last minute -
so I'm trying to research all my options ahead of time with phone numbers, prices etc. So for example - you might want to, just in case, have the numbers, hours etc. of vets in you destination town in case of medical emergencies and also boarding places. As well as housing, U-haul etc.

I am another one that rents for a short period in between. I found that the expense of a couple of months rent was offset by both the reduction of moving stress and the sheer power of being able to tell the realtors, sellers, etc. in the new location "Well my house has already sold and closed and now I'm in a rental, pre-aproved, with my downpayment sitting in the bank, and I am looking for my NEW home." :) I was also able to check out areas I was interested in in greater depth and their related commutes at different times of day since I was living nearby (this eliminated a couple of areas).