Real Estate the Ramsey Way - What Contingencies Should We Consider When Selling Our House?

Episode Date: June 29, 2026

Selling a home while relocating comes with a lot of moving pieces. We walk through the contingencies you should consider and the steps you can take to protect yourself during the process. Next steps: ·   🏠 Not sure what to do next when buying or selling your home? Check out our ⁠⁠Real Estate Home Base⁠⁠ for free tools and resources to guide your next steps. · 🏠 And if you’re ready to buy or sell your home, ⁠⁠connect with a RamseyTrusted® real estate agent⁠⁠. They’re experts who’ll help you confidently navigate homeownership the way we teach. Explore more from Ramsey Network: 💸 The Ramsey Show Highlights 🧠 The Dr. John Delony Show 🍸 Smart Money Happy Hour 💰 George Kamel 🪑 Front Row Seat with Ken Coleman 📈 EntreLeadership   Ramsey Solutions Privacy Policy

My wife and I are planning on moving in the next 18 months, but we're planning on moving to a different state to be closer to family. So my question is, how do we tackle that large of a move? For context, we have 85,000 and so left on our house, and it's worth about 350. So our plan would be to take the equity from the house and use that as the down payment toward the next house. But if we don't sell our house and but find one in the next state and vice versa, if we have somebody wanting to buy our house here, but we haven't found the next house. What do we go about with contingencies? How would that work?

Well, before I worried about that, I would flowchart this and say, we are moving when these things happen and not until. And I don't know what these things are, but the two that come to mind could be the house sells, and it could be you have your new job lined up there. You didn't mention that. You just said, we want to be closer to family. You didn't mention I've got a job lined up, do you?

Well, I work remote, and I can work anywhere, so the job will just go with me. Okay, that's easy then. Okay. So the only thing keeping you from leaving could be the sale of the house. You could just sit there until the house sells. And then if we sell this house, would it be smart to do at least back while we're finding the house in the next state? I mean, if you can delay the closing, that's fine. if you end up, you know, what I would do is when you put your house on the market, I would begin

shopping houses there and say this neighborhood, these four houses in this neighborhood would be great, any of them would be great. And if our house sales were immediately going to make an offer on one of those and we'll set them up for closings two days apart and you can make that happen. Or you can, you know, set up a, if the buyer is willing on your side, to let you live there for a month while you fool around and find a house. That's fine. But I think you can do your footwork, especially if you've got family over there and you

maybe live there before yourself. I don't know. You kind of know some of the areas already that you're thinking of. Go over there and look at, go physically, go visit the houses like you're looking for a house because you are. And only you're just not putting in an offer today. And then don't get all hot and bothered and buy a house before yourselves. That's going to get you into a mess.

at least don't close up. Yeah, so now, so that I actually did this a few years ago. We ended up, it was a two-step procedure for us because we were going to build. And obviously we didn't have time to build while we sat in the old house, right? So we bought another house. But we had already shopped that neighborhood before we put our house on the market. We put it on the market. It's sold.

And we made offers on three different houses in that neighborhood and bought one of them moved into that neighborhood. And you can do that kind of a thing. And you can also put a contingency offer that's contingent upon the closing of your old house. And you don't have to close on the new one until the old one sells. We have been half listeners for the last eight years of our marriage. And we pretty much impulsively bought a house because we wanted to have a house before

our first baby. And so we've been in this house for four years now. Okay. And it is 50% of our income. Okay. And it is exhausting. It's like sucking the life out of us. However, my husband runs his business out of our three-car garage.

So we don't really know what to do because we have renters and that's how we stay alive. And so it was all on us. Correct. To our family and then one, somebody that we found and we did background checks and everything. And he's phenomenal. So we love our rent. and we love the environment in our home. It's just if one of them were to back out or all three of them, you know, we would not survive.

Yes. Is it 50% with just what you guys are paying plus what the renters are paying or that includes the renters? 50% includes the renter. We get $2,400 a month from renters. Okay. And we make $6,400 on our portion. So we get about almost $10,000 a month. on average it's about 9,500 a month.

Okay. And all of our house mortgage and bills come up to about 53 a month. How much is just the mortgage? Not the bills, but just the mortgage. 43. 43, yeah. Yeah, I mean, you're definitely in a high-risk situation, and you're having to, yeah, depend on these people exactly how you're feeling.

Yeah, I think I, unless he's going to be getting a significant raise, anytime soon. Is the business, he's running his own business, is there an upward trajectory? Like, are you guys looking out and say, okay, yeah, in two years it's going to double? Like, have you, have you done projections, like how it's been a pattern so far? Yeah. So he just started in May of last year. So he's not even a year in, and he did $125,000 before taxes last year. And we took home about 86 of it. And so he's been doing really well. And he's, he's been doing really well. And he's, took off and because of his experience with his previous job, he's got really frequent clients and he's getting a lot of really great work. So he sees a lot of growth and I see a lot of growth

in the company. How fast will that grow? Potentially in the next year, we're even thinking that he could double it. So we see a lot of growth, but that's the biggest thing is we need the three-car garage because renting a space out here for that price is at least four to six thousand. for the space that he needs with the tools and everything that he would need to move. Right, right. But my fear is you've already left the house. What do you mean by that? Like my fear is you're already out.

And y'all can come up with a bunch of reasons to stay, but I feel you're already out. Yeah, the stress is weighing on you, Marais. So what I would do is I would have benchmarks for you guys. Because if you doubled it, then it goes from 50% to about 35% if my numbers are right. And then if you doubled the business again, right, if it really is, Is that successful? You guys will be fine in 24 months. But the question is you have to have benchmarks. And if you can sustain that for 24 months and hold your breath and say, let's see if this works, you could. But if it does not double in a year, you guys have to have a hard and fast

rule to say we were selling. Hey, guys, thanks for listening to Real Estate the Ramsey Way. Now, if you're here, you're probably thinking about buying or selling a house. It's exciting. And one of the biggest financial decisions you'll ever make. But you don't want to do it with an inexperienced agent who will rush you into costly mistakes like the ones some of our callers find themselves in. You need a pro who knows what the flip they're doing and will keep you on track with your financial goals. That's why we only recommend Ramsey trusted real estate agents. These are vetted, hand-picked pros who actually listen to your needs, guide you through the process, and fight to get you the best deal. To find a Ramsey trusted agent near you, go to Ramsey Solutions.com.

com slash trusted agent. That's ramsysolutions.com slash trusted agent.