I was able to have closing on my sold house and my purchased house consecutive days. With two days travel time it worked out very well (purchased with power of attorney relative).

We had similar angst over finding another place though it was a second home - weekend/vacation lake place. We sold our house to friends of a neighbor without a realtor. We verbally struck the deal last fall at which time we'd already been looking 4-5 months. We settled on move out date of 6/15/15 though the closing was in March. As the moving date approached we still hadn't found anything so we rented a giant storage facility assuming we'd have to move twice. The thought of moving twice was overwhelming and it seemed we'd need to rent even more storage space for the contents of our six garage stalls.

In mid-May we decided to take a second look at a place we'd seen in the fall that had been for sale for five years. We'd really liked the house and lot but the lake wasn't ideal. After looking for a year we realized we probably weren't going to find a "perfect" place and would have to compromise on something. So we made an offer way below asking and finally settled on something in the middle. We didn't need financing so were able to close in three weeks - four days AFTER our move out date.

We ended up moving our stuff into the moving vehicle our buyers used and leaving it at our old place until we could move in so only one move. What's really funny is that our buyers were so anxious to move in that they loaded all our stuff into the trailer for us on a Friday since we couldn't be there to do it until Saturday. We stopped by on Friday night and our stuff was out, theirs was in and settled including new light fixtures and pictures hung on walls.

This is the second weekend in our new place and we love it!

Congratulations on finding your perfect house. Is it the ranch style you were looking for? Happy it all worked out for you.

Suzi,
Yes, it's a ranch. Yay! It has almost everything we wanted plus character, so we are very happy.

Gibby,

That's pretty good- you got your buyers to load the truck for you! Never heard that one before. So glad you are enjoying your new place! Makes the hunt worthwhile.

Good news! What a relief for you!

We have done the moving to a new house a number of ways, and got lucky with timing. We usually had to move for business reasons and the company would offer a bridge loan to cover expenses of buying/selling and covering the cost of two mortgages. Most of our houses were during the housing bubble, so things sold fast. Our last house took a bit longer (six months) and we didn't have a bridge loan. We rented for almost a year to avoid two mortgages.

Congratulations on finding the one! I had a similar situation earlier this year when I sold my house and closed in 23 days and had a rentback for a few months. It was very stressful finding a new house in my new city but I too found the right one just in time (when I had given up and started looking at rentals). Funny how things work out. Hope the move goes well and you are happy in your new home!

Congratulations!!!! That is great news - happy to hear you got a ranch with almost everything you wanted plus character! That is exactly what I hope to find next year when trying to go through this horribly stressful experience. We figure we'll have to rent because we are not hopeful of finding our next house that easily. We have to sell first, cannot afford to risk the reverse situation. We learned a LOT of what we don't want with out current house -- our options in our area are greatly reduced as a result!

Photocat,
Your situation sounds so much like ours. All along, we said we would just rent rather than settle for something we didn't really want. But, when it came time to start looking at rentals, and I saw what the cost was going to be for short-term, I started feeling really down. We went and looked at one short -term condo we could rent and it was expensive and I started thinking about how we'd have to put almost everything in storage (another expense) and move twice and do the change of address thing, etc, and that was stressful. Then, the very next day, we found this ranch on our local fsbo site!!! Talk about good timing! I was checking all the fsbo sites, about eight of them and the MLS about three times every day. I was getting really sick of it, but in the end it paid off. I wish you much luck when you begin your search!

Thanks simplifyingmylife :)

You definitely give me hope! Have to admit, I'm not sure it would have occurred to me to check on the fsbo sites - I'll be sure to add that to the search plan. Enjoy your new digs.