Ed Neuhaus 
Here is a scenario I run into almost every week.
Someone calls me because they found a house in Bee Cave. Perfect lot, great schools, reasonable commute. They want it. But they have not listed their current place in South Austin yet. They have not hired a stager, done a pre-listing inspection, or even had a serious conversation about what it is worth. They just found the house, and now they want to know: can we make this work?
Yes. But it takes a plan.
Selling and buying at the same time is the most common situation I deal with as an Austin real estate agent. It is also the one that generates the most stress, the most sleepless nights, and the most late-night phone calls. Not because it is impossible. It is very doable. But because most people try to wing it instead of thinking through the logistics before they start.
So lets talk through this. What are your actual options, how do they work in the current Austin market, and how do you put together a plan that does not leave you homeless or paying two mortgages?
The Four Paths (And What Each One Actually Costs You)
Every move-up buyer in Austin has four basic options. None of them is perfect. Each involves a tradeoff between money, risk, time, and stress. The right choice depends on your equity position, your timeline flexibility, and honestly, your tolerance for uncertainty.
Path 1: List First, Buy Second
This is the lowest-risk approach. You put your current home on the market, get it under contract, close, and then buy. Clean and simple. The problem is the gap between those two transactions. Most sellers in Austin need to be out of their home by closing, and most closings are 30-45 days out. If you have not found your next home yet, you are moving into temporary housing for an unknown period of time.
For some people that is fine. For families with kids in school, pets, furniture, and a strong preference for not living in a Marriott for six weeks, it is a genuine hardship. But from a financial standpoint it is the cleanest option because you know exactly what you are walking away from the sale with before you commit to a purchase price on the next one.
Path 2: Find the Home, Then List Simultaneously
This is the high-wire approach. You find something you want to buy, you make an offer contingent on the sale of your current home, and then you rush to list your current home and hope both transactions close within a few weeks of each other.
When it works, it is elegant. You move from one house to another with minimal disruption. When it does not work, you are either stuck in the house you are trying to leave or scrambling to close the purchase before your financing falls apart.
This approach only works if you are disciplined about getting your current home truly ready to sell before you start shopping for the next one. Not pretty ready. Actually ready. Priced correctly, staged, professionally photographed. The contingency clock starts ticking the moment you go under contract on your purchase.
Path 3: Bridge Loan
A bridge loan lets you borrow against the equity in your current home to fund the down payment on your next one before you have sold. You are essentially carrying two mortgages for a short period, with the bridge loan getting paid off when your current home closes.
It is expensive. Bridge loans in Austin right now are running 9% to 12% interest, interest-only, with origination fees on top of that. On a 00,000 home with 00,000 in equity, you might borrow 00,000 at 10% for 90 days. That is roughly $,000 in interest plus $,000-$,000 in origination costs. Call it $,000-$,000 all-in for the convenience.
Whether that is worth it depends entirely on the deal. If carrying a bridge loan means you can move into your dream house without a contingency, which makes your offer dramatically more competitive, that $,000 might be the best money you have ever spent. If you are doing it just because you do not want to deal with temporary housing, run the numbers against the temporary housing option first.
Path 4: Sale Contingency Offer
A sale contingency means your offer to purchase is conditional on the sale of your current home. The seller agrees to take their home off the market (or leave it on with a kick-out clause) while you sell yours.
During the Austin seller market of 2021-2022, contingent offers were essentially dead on arrival. Sellers had 30 cash offers with no contingencies. They were not waiting around for you to sell your ranch house in Cedar Park.
2026 is different. With 89 average days on market and inventory at levels we have not seen since 2011, most sellers are not turning down qualified buyers over a contingency. Sellers in Bee Cave, Lakeway, and Dripping Springs are negotiating on terms right now in ways that would have been unthinkable three years ago. Contingent offers are legitimate and getting accepted.
The catch is that most contingency agreements include a kick-out clause, meaning the seller can continue marketing the home. If they get another offer, they can give you 72 hours (typically) to either waive the contingency and proceed or release the contract. So you still need to have your current home in a position to move quickly.
How Bridge Loans Actually Work in Texas
I want to spend a minute on bridge loans because there is a lot of confusion about what they are and how they are structured.
A bridge loan is a short-term loan, typically 6 to 18 months, secured by your current home equity. Most lenders require that you have significant equity (usually 20% or more remaining after the bridge loan), and they will look at your ability to carry both the bridge loan payment and your existing mortgage payment simultaneously. You typically need a combined LTV of 80% or less across both properties.
The math works like this. Say your current home is worth 00,000 and you owe 00,000 on it. You have 00,000 in equity. A lender might allow you to borrow up to 60,000 (keeping LTV at 80%). If your next home costs 00,000 and you need 80,000 for a 20% down payment, a bridge loan covers that cleanly.
Not all conventional lenders offer bridge loans. You will often be working with private lenders or portfolio lenders who specialize in short-term real estate financing. Rates are higher than conventional mortgages because the risk profile is different and the loan term is short. Budget for 10% to 12% and 1-2 points origination, and make sure your lender is upfront about all-in costs before you commit.
One thing I always tell clients considering a bridge loan: get your current home listed and under contract before the bridge loan closes if at all possible. Every week you are carrying that interest is money out of your pocket. The faster you sell, the less expensive the bridge loan becomes.
Leaseback Agreements: Sell First, Stay Put
This is one of the most underused tools in Austin real estate and it is exactly what I think of when someone tells me they need time to find their next home after selling.
A leaseback (sometimes called a seller temporary residential lease) lets you close on the sale of your current home and then stay in it as a tenant for a period of time, paying rent to the new owner, while you search for and close on your next property.
Texas TREC has a standard addendum for this (TREC Form 15-5), and it works cleanly. You negotiate the leaseback period (typically 30-90 days) and the daily rent rate (usually tied to the buyer PITI, so it covers their mortgage costs). At the end of the leaseback, you are out and they are in.
From the seller perspective, this is genuinely useful because you have locked in your sale price and terms, you know exactly how much you are walking away with, and you have a defined window to find your next home without the pressure of a simultaneous closing. You have taken the transaction risk off the table on one side.
From the buyer perspective, it is also workable in a buyer market, because the buyer is essentially earning rent on a property they own. Some buyers want to move in immediately and will not accept a leaseback. Others are flexible, especially if they are coming from out of town or have their own flexibility on move-in timing.
One practical note on leasebacks: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac cap seller leasebacks at 60 days if the buyer is using conventional financing. If you need more than 60 days, you will need a buyer who is using portfolio financing, cash, or a lender outside the conventional guidelines. Worth knowing before you design your whole plan around a 90-day leaseback.
Temporary Housing in the Hill Country
If you go the sell-first route and do not have a leaseback or contingency to fall back on, you are going to need somewhere to land. The Hill Country corridor has solid options.
Short-term rentals in Bee Cave, Lakeway, and Dripping Springs are plentiful and well-suited for families in transition. A furnished 3-bedroom in the 78738 zip code runs $,000 to $,000 per month depending on season and amenity level. Not cheap, but cheaper than carrying two mortgages for three months, and a lot more comfortable than a hotel.
Extended-stay corporate housing near the Lakeway and Bee Cave area is another route, particularly if you are doing a longer bridge of 60 or more days. Many of these offer monthly rates and flexible lease terms specifically for relocation situations.
I have also had clients do a month-to-month lease on a rental property in the corridor. Less convenient than a short-term rental but often less expensive, and it keeps you close to the neighborhoods you are shopping in. You get to know the commute, the weekend traffic, which grocery store you actually like. Not the worst way to spend two months before locking into a 30-year decision.
Timing: When to List, When to Start Looking, How to Coordinate the Close
Timing is where most dual-transaction situations fall apart. Not because people do not have a plan, but because the plan does not account for how long things actually take.
Getting Your Current Home Ready (4-8 Weeks)
Before you list, you need to do a pre-listing inspection, address anything material, stage the home, and get professional photography done. In a buyer market with 12,800 active listings, you do not get a second chance to make a first impression. If you are cutting corners on prep because you are anxious to start shopping, you are going to sit on the market. And a stale listing is a bad negotiating position for both transactions.
The home staging process alone can take 2-4 weeks to do properly. Add in the inspection, repairs, and photography, and you are realistically looking at 4-6 weeks of prep before you should be listing. I have seen people try to compress this to 10 days. It almost never goes well.
While You Are Under Contract on the Sale (30-45 Days)
Once you are under contract on your current home, you are in a race. Your option period is 7-10 days. After that, you have roughly 35 days until closing. This is when you need to be actively looking at your next home, ideally already having toured properties and knowing your top candidates.
If you have not started shopping before you are under contract, you are behind. You can still do it, but you are making decisions under time pressure rather than from a position of clarity.
Coordinating closing dates is something I handle directly with both title companies. In a perfect world, you close the sale of your current home in the morning and the purchase of your next home in the afternoon. Austin title companies do this regularly. It requires both transactions to be aligned on timing, which is why I push to get both contracts written with synchronized timelines from the start.
For a closer look at what happens during those 30-45 days once you are under contract on the sell side, the Austin seller closing timeline walks through it day by day.
The Pricing Connection
One thing that surprises people: how you price your current home directly affects what you can afford on the next one. This is not obvious until you are staring at a net sheet at the title company and realizing you priced your home 0,000 too low in your head.
Pricing strategy in Austin right now is nuanced. You do not want to chase the market down with price reductions that cost you weeks of DOM and negotiating leverage. But you also do not want to overprice and sit. I always run the buy-side math before we set the list price, because the two are directly connected.
The One-Agent Advantage
Ok, I am going to be direct about something here because it actually matters.
Most people in a dual-transaction situation use two different agents. Their listing agent handles the sale. Their buyer agent handles the purchase. Those two agents have never spoken to each other, do not know each other timelines, and often have competing priorities.
When I represent someone on both sides, I know everything. I know the exact terms of both contracts, both option periods, both financing contingencies, and both closing timelines. I can coordinate directly with both title companies and both sets of lenders. When something shifts on the buy side that affects the sell side, I know immediately and I can adjust both transactions at once.
More importantly: I can tell you the honest truth about both transactions simultaneously. If your buyer asks for repairs that would eat into your down payment on the next house, I can do that math in real time and tell you whether to negotiate, concede, or walk. If the appraisal on your sale comes in low, I can model what that does to your purchasing power and give you options, not just the problem.
That coordination also does something the financial analysis does not capture: it reduces the emotional load. A lot of people describe the sell-and-buy process as the most stressful thing they have ever done. I believe it. And a big part of that stress comes from uncertainty and communication gaps. When one person is managing both sides with a coherent plan, you get answers faster and surprises are rarer.
At Neuhaus Realty Group, we have been doing this for 19 years in Austin. Coordinating both sides of a move as one cohesive transaction is a core part of what we do for move-up buyers across West Austin, Bee Cave, Lakeway, and Dripping Springs.
Back to Bee Cave
So back to the person who called me about the house in Bee Cave. Had not listed their South Austin home yet, no plan in place, but they found something they wanted.
Here is what we actually did. We did a quick walk-through of their South Austin home to assess realistic prep time and list price. We ran the numbers on a contingent offer versus a bridge loan versus a leaseback scenario. We decided that the home in Bee Cave had been on the market long enough that the seller would accept a contingency with a 30-day kick-out clause, which bought us time to get the South Austin home ready without burning cash on a bridge loan.
We got the South Austin home staged and photographed in three weeks. Listed it. Under contract in 12 days. We coordinated both closings for the same week, with a 3-day leaseback on the South Austin home so they could move directly into the Bee Cave house without a storage unit.
Not every situation is that clean. But having a plan at the start is what made it possible. If that client had made a contingent offer without a sell-side plan, or rushed the listing before the home was actually ready, the whole thing falls apart.
The sequence matters. The preparation matters. And having someone who has done this enough times to anticipate the problems before they happen makes a real difference.
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If you are a move-up buyer in Austin, Bee Cave, Lakeway, or Dripping Springs trying to figure out how to time a sale and a purchase, reach out to Ed Neuhaus directly. We will sit down, run the numbers, and put together a plan that fits your timeline and your financial picture, before you fall in love with the next house you cannot quite commit to yet.
