Mapping Two Closings: A Practical Way to Plan a Move-Up Sale and Purchase

A step by step way to line up a home sale and a home purchase on the same calendar before you list either one.

Before you put a home on the market while also planning to buy another, it helps to put both transactions on the same piece of paper. Not a rough guess, an actual side by side timeline. One line for the sale of your current home. One line for the purchase of your next one. The space between the two closing dates is the part of this move that deserves the most attention, because it is the part most people leave unplanned.

Start with the sale side. Think through how long it typically takes a home like yours to go from listing to a signed contract, and then how long from contract to closing, in the part of Des Moines where your home sits. A smaller starter home near the River District moves through the process differently than a larger single-family home in Old Town, simply because of buyer pool, price point, and typical financing timelines. Use realistic numbers, not best case ones.

Do the same for the purchase side. How long does it usually take to find a home that fits what your family needs. How long from offer to closing once you are under contract. Put a realistic range on paper rather than a hopeful one.

Now look at the gap between the two closing dates. If the numbers line up closely, you may only need a short bridge, perhaps a few days of overlap covered by movers and storage. If the gap is wider, you have decisions to make. You might ask for a rent-back on your sale so you can stay a few extra weeks. You might build in a contingency on your purchase. You might plan for temporary housing from the start rather than treating it as a fallback.

The point of mapping it out before you list is that none of these decisions have to be made under pressure. You are not discovering the gap the week before your sale closes. You already know its size, and you already have a plan for covering it, whether that plan is a rent-back, a bridge loan, or a short stay somewhere else while the second closing catches up.

Here are the two dates and here is the gap between them. Once that is written down, deciding how to cover it is a much smaller problem than it feels like when the dates are still a guess.