Should You Sell Your Current Home Before Buying New Construction in Utah?

This is a real worry for a lot of buyers – nobody wants to be between homes if the new build is not ready. If you have an interim housing plan – a short-term rental, an Airbnb, or family you can stay with – it is much less stressful to be under contract to sell your current home before you go buy. Selling a resale home right now takes time, because the buyer pool is smaller: resale buyers are the group that prefers a finished basement and finished yard over a builder’s low interest rate, and most buyers today are chasing the builder incentive instead. Here is the key mechanic: most Utah builders will let you go under contract on a new home while you have a house to sell, but they will not accept a true subject-to-sale (or contingent-to-sale) contingency. You put down the builder deposit, which works like earnest money. If your house does not sell in time, you can back out – but you lose the deposit. If you buy the new home first and give yourself about three months to sell, that can be a stressful stretch and you may have to price below your expected value to get sold in time. Selling first is the calmer sale, with the trade-off being interim-housing risk if the timing does not line up. Aligning the two closings is more art than science.

Related: Deferred Maintenance: Resale vs. New Construction in Utah · What Happens After You Sign a Utah New Construction Contract? · Moving to Utah