BUYER CONTINGENCY Selling your home often involves buying another - a juggling act that takes a lot of planning and a little luck to move along perfectly. Most folks can't afford to carry two house payments on their budgets, and need to sell their current residence in order to have a sufficient down payment on the next one. In a perfect world, a seller wouldn't need to look for a new home until the first one was sold. And the seller could then find a new home, negotiate the deal, and set financing in motion, and close at just the right time in order to vacate the first house and move into the next one. Everybody in the buying/selling chain would move easily from one house to the next. In a perfect world. With so much to consider when buying (and selling) a home, 'perfect world' doesn't exist. It is not uncommon to begin house-hunting before you've sold your current home. You may then find the perfect next home before the one you're living in is sold. When you make an offer, request a contingency based on the sale of your current home. Sellers often don't like this type of contingency because if you can't sell your house, you won't be buying theirs, which will then have been off the market, out of circulation. On the other hand, if the home you have your eye on has been on the market for awhile, or is vacant, the seller may be willing to take your offer contingent upon the sale of the house you're living in at the time. One sort of compromise is the 72-hour release (or a time frame that buyer and seller agree on) clause that's often included in the language of the contingency to offer some protection to the seller. This clause allows the seller to keep their property on the market, despite your offer. In the event they get another offer, they can accept it as the back-up. The seller then contacts you and gives you 72 hours (or however long you've agreed upon) to remove the contingency on your offer. If you do that, and proceed with the purchase of the house, it's yours. Or you can decline, cancel the contract altogether, and the next buyers proceed. Naturally, contingent sale buyers don't like the 72-hour clause. In short, you can lose the house you hope to buy. One way to avoid getting caught in this dilemna is to make your offer, contingent on the sale of your current home, and then set a time frame within which you will sell your house, say three or four weeks. This can work if you have a highly marketable property, in great shape, in a good location, and you've priced it to sell. In this scenario, the home you want to buy will be 'sale pending' while you make every effort to sell your house, and line up financing and inspection for the one you hope to move into. If, in the end, you still haven't sold your home, the sellers will put their property back on the market.