Anonymous wrote:Always sell from March-June, buy between October-January.

You say that but we just sold our Bethesda house in January in 2 days. 6 offers, all over asking, most without inspections, one 100% cash. So if you time it for a quiet period when there's little else on the market you can use that to your advantage.

Always sell from March-June, buy between October-January.

Buy what you can afford, a mortgage that you can pay without stretching yourselves thin. You cannot time the market. So, if you are planning to live in this house 10-15 years, you will be fine.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Get a HELOC in place now so you can use it to buy before selling.

+1

That’s the best way to do it.

Thx.
Can you do this if you're planning on a jumbo loan?

Anonymous wrote:Get a HELOC in place now so you can use it to buy before selling.

+1

That’s the best way to do it.

Get a HELOC in place now so you can use it to buy before selling.

I think this depends on what your budget is and what it means to stretch for you.

I think the interest rates will continue to rise for a year or more, and then will stay there for a few years at least, and will probably not come down to the pandemic lows for a long time. So waiting a year to buy may be worse, especially since prices now seem to be holding relatively firm in the desirable areas. There is just a lot of money out there, so I don't think prices are going to come down all that much in the close in suburbs and desirable neighborhoods in DC.

So my advice would be to pay less and buy this spring or summer. If you can wait until fall, you can get better prices but inventory is so low that it can be tough to find anything worthwhile if you have specific areas in mind.

Sell
Rent
Buy after one year.

Save. Have a considerable down payment so that you don't have to finance much.

All cash buyers don't have to worry about rates. Yes, I saw that you said you can't do all cash but then you want to do the next best thing: large down payment.

Hopefully your house will sell for a considerable amount and you've been able to save something comparable to the value of your home.

We have long grown out of our 900sq ft starter house and are hoping to move in the next 6 months.
With all I read here about prices continuing to increase in close in DMV areas and interest rates staying put for longer than we can, what is best strategy for buying in next 6 months? Could push it 12 months if we had to.

Wait until after spring market?
Stretch with higher interest rates and pray they come down in a few years?
No contingencies?
Buy off market?
Find a fixer upper / put less cash down so high interest rates are on lower principle?

Unfortunately all cash is not an option (and why we weren’t able to buy before interest rates rose).
We also need to sell out current house to buy another