Timing the Buy & Sell | Realtor In Your Pocket Podcast

Buying your next home is a major milestone — but coordinating a purchase while selling your current property is where timing, planning, and strategy truly matter.

In this episode of Realtor in Your Pocket, Nick Fundytus, Karim Ali, and Chelsea Angus break down what you need to know when purchasing a home while navigating the sale of your current one. From deciding whether to buy first or sell first, to aligning closing dates, managing financing considerations, and protecting yourself with the right conditions, this conversation offers practical guidance for one of the most complex transitions in real estate.

If you’re asking:

• Should I buy first or sell first?
• How do I avoid being without a home between closings?
• What if my home doesn’t sell in time?
• How do I reduce risk while staying competitive?

…this episode is for you.

Have questions about this podcast or about buying, selling, or living in Ottawa?
Get in touch with our team today.

The Realtor In Your Pocket podcast shares monthly advice about real estate through the lens of experienced professionals in Ottawa, Ontario. We provide insights into purchasing, selling, moving, renting, owning, and all things housing — designed to keep you educated and in control through your journey. Subscribe to our channel on YouTube and hit the bell to stay ahead of the market, and keep a Realtor in Your Pocket.

Transcript:

Nick:
I mean, obviously, as three Realtors, we’ve got some bias here, right? But it is a matter of knowing what the variables are and controlling for them as much as possible. On the mortgage broker side, like you said, it’s how much money do you have access to? If you buy first and then it takes you longer than you think to sell, are you going to be able to weather that? When you do sell, do you have a Realtor® on your side? This is where the bias comes in. But do you have a Realtor on your side who has a really accurate idea of what your home is going to sell for and can give you a realistic idea of how long it’s going to take to sell in the current market? You want somebody who’s been around enough but is not just going to treat you like a number.

You’re listening to Realtor In Your pocket podcast. Do you want a head start on buying, selling, or renting in Ottawa? You’re in the right place. Every episode brings you great advice and insight that you can keep in your back pocket until you make your move. And now, here’s your host, Nick Fundytus.

Here we are back with technically season 2 after—I mean, what, a couple of year hiatus on here. We’re making a serious effort to make sure that we’re bringing good information out. Welcome back to Realtor In Your Pocket. I’m Nick Fundytus, and today we are going to talk about the single most common source of stress for anyone who already owns a home but is looking to move. It’s the timeline—the question of, in what order do I do this? Do I buy my next home first or do I sell my current home first?

It is a difficult decision because there isn’t one right answer. Trying to time the market is incredibly difficult. Things can shift in a matter of months, and what worked for your neighborhood two years ago might not work for you today.

In this episode, we’re going to throw it out to the team here and look at practical—we will discuss the pros and cons of buying first versus selling first. We’ll look at specific tools like the sale of property condition that can sometimes bridge the gap. Our goal is to help you figure out which path makes the most sense for your life.

To help me discuss this, I’ve invited Chelsea Angus and Karim Ali from our team to join the conversation. Chelsea and Karim are out there working with our buyer and seller clients every day, helping them navigate these exact circumstances. I wanted to bring them in to share some real-world examples of how this plays out and how different clients handle the process.

Chelsea, Karim, thank you very much for coming and joining for the first episode back.

Chelsea:
Yeah. Thanks for having us.

Karim:
Yeah. Thanks for having us.

Nick:
We’re excited. First question is going to go out to Karim, Chelsea—and on any of these questions, just jump in on each other.

There’s often a temptation to try and time the market perfectly, so waiting for interest rates to drop or for prices to peak. Based on the conversations you’re having with our clients right now, why can that be a risky approach for someone who just needs to move?

Karim:
Yeah, it’s hard. Timing the market is really hard to do. It’s nearly impossible. If you do it right, you’ll only know in hindsight, so looking back—and I think you can only get lucky. There are lots of variables at play there.

You have to figure out what interest rates are going to do, what demand is going to look like, inventory. If you get one of those wrong, you’ll end up paying way more than you’re expecting to pay for the home you want, or get priced out completely out of the market.

Now, the risk is that you end up in a situation where you’re either going to own two homes or you’re going to end up with no homes. Those are the two big risk situations.

Interest rates, obviously, are a huge variable there because you don’t know what they’re going to be like months in advance. You can only do the preparation that you can and make sure you’re prepared as much as possible to be ready for the unknown.

Nick:
All right, Chels, for you. We often talk about buyer’s markets and seller’s markets. Can you explain how the current market conditions might change a client’s strategy? Does one market favor buying first versus selling first?

Chelsea:
Yeah, for sure. Just to give you an idea of what each means—for a seller’s market, we typically see more buyers than homes available. So a lot more competition, less days on market. Things are selling maybe at or a little bit above what sellers are asking for even.

And it just makes it a little bit more risk for the buyer to secure maybe the home that they really like.

And then when we’re looking at a buyer’s market, so it’s the opposite, you see days on market is a little bit longer. Sellers might have to make sure their strategy really aligns with the current market. And buyers have a little bit more negotiating power just because there are more homes available.

So when we’re looking at both, we typically suggest—when we’re working with our clients—we suggest to buy first in a seller’s market just because there’s more competition out there, and to sell first in a buyer’s market because we want to make sure that we can manage those longer days on market.

In essence, you’re taking the more difficult piece in either those market, and you’re doing it first. Because in a buyer’s market, it’s going to be very easy to go buy a home, but it’s going to be harder to get your home sold. If we get that out of the way, we know that there’s options out there for you. Then the opposite in a seller’s market.

Nick:
Okay, that makes sense. Another one back to you. We’ll talk a little bit about strategies, buying and selling. Let’s start with the most conservative route: selling first. Who is the strategy usually best for, and what are the main benefits you see for a client who chooses to sell first?

Chelsea:
Like you said, definitely the more conservative route and the lower risk route, you can say. This option, I’d say, is best for those who need the equity from their home—or those who might be a little bit more worried or less willing to take on that risk. Because definitely, it’s a big transaction and there is a lot of emotions that go in, especially if you’re waiting for your home to sell after having already bought.

We can say that as listing agents, when we have properties listed for sale, when we go home—you wear that on your shoulders. You go to bed at night, you’re like, “Why hasn’t my listing sold?” You’re working with the best strategy, the best marketing that we can put out there. Our marketing is good, but sometimes things take a while. So you can’t imagine what a homeowner is feeling like when that happens.

Nick:
Exactly. I’ve sold a home before, and I know what that feels like when you’re sitting in it, and especially when your wife is one of the sellers, your listing agent. But I know sometimes when people have a certain timeline to sell, it feels—everybody’s motivation is going to be different, though. So some people just cruise right through it, and they say, “When it happens, it happens.” Other people are calling us every day to see why it hasn’t sold yet.

Chelsea:
Exactly.

Nick:
The follow-up here for either of you—you just said the obvious worry is selling quickly and having nowhere to go. How do we protect clients from selling quickly and not having a place to land?

Karim:
There’s a middle ground you can achieve there by having a condition of sale or a first refusal on the sale of your home as you’re buying the next place you’re getting into. This is actually effective in today’s market, I find. Buyers nowadays have a bit of leverage, but they’re not certain they’ll sell quickly enough. We’re in a balanced market right now. Buyers are often able to negotiate a first refusal.

Nick:
So should I explain that in plain terms? Well, actually, we’ll come to it in a little bit more detail just in the tools that are in our pocket.

Chelsea:
Yeah. Another way that we have done it in the past successfully is just with flexible closing dates. So we could even insert a clause into your agreement to allow us to move that closing date within reason, and later on help align it with the purchase or the sale of the home.

Nick:
Yeah. Then sometimes, depending on the market, sometimes we’ll just do it with a long closing date for your house. Because if we sell your house at 628 Gaines, and we know that you want to move somewhere—but we give three months before Gaines closes—it means you’ve got three months to find and close your next place, which is usually enough time, especially in more of a buyer’s market.

As an aside, you guys threw out a term there: balanced market. So you talked about seller’s market, you talked about buyer’s market, and balanced market. And it’s probably worth noting for anybody who’s listening that any of these markets refer to the time it would take if you turned off the tap of new listings today and you continued selling homes at the same pace—how many months would it take?

You’ll hear us talk on our monthly market updates about months of inventory. A seller’s market is less than four, and a buyer’s market is more than six. For the last five, five and a half years, maybe even a little bit longer, we have been in a seller’s market, and we’re just starting to touch—sometimes we’re starting to touch—a buyer’s market.

I know last month, we just hit it like exactly four months of inventory. That’s where there’s really, I don’t know, the right amount of homes available for sale that you keep a steady pace. Prices tend to be stable during that, but we can cover the economics of it in another episode.

Okay. Karim, you get one. On another hand, we have buying first. This is often what people want to do because it feels safer to know where you’re going. But realistically, what does a client need to have in place to work safely—to buy first safely?

Karim:

If you’re going to buy first safely, first, you want to make sure that you know your numbers really well, because you’ll have to commit to this purchase without having sold your home—without having that guarantee of knowing what the price of your home will be. You have to, first, I think, first and foremost, just hire a competent mortgage broker who you trust, who you know will advise you accordingly to your situation to be able to buy first.

Of course, buying first is most effective in the seller’s market, as we mentioned. A lot of it is, again, preparation. Even just talking with your mortgage worker about personal agreements you have.

I’ve seen people before being unable to commit to the agreements they’ve had in buying a home because more previous divorces came through and came up with a surface there and ended up not working for them while they were in agreement—a firm agreement to buy a home.

Nick: I love it. It’s just proper preparation and knowing—I guess talking to a Realtor, knowing what your home is worth before you go through the… I mean, obviously as three Realtors, we’ve got some bias here, right? Yes, of course. But it is a matter of knowing what the variables are and controlling for them as much as possible.

On the mortgage broker side, like you said, it’s how much money do you have access to? If you buy first and then it takes you longer than you think to sell, are you going to be able to weather that?

When you do sell, do you have a Realtor on your side? This is where the bias comes in. But do you have a Realtor on your side who has a really accurate idea of what your home is going to sell for and can give you a realistic idea of how long it’s going to take to sell in the current market? You want somebody who’s been around enough but is not just going to treat you like a number.

It’s somebody who’s going to sit down and actually give you a real detailed analysis. Then there’s other variables outside of real estate. If you’re going through a divorce and you have to sell for that reason, do you know that the divorce is going to be finalized by a certain date and you’ll have whatever money you need to buy the home?

Because all kinds of crazy… I mean, anybody who’s listening who’s been through a divorce, which is lots of people, could probably tell us stories about the crazy things that happen that are unexpected there.

I’ve seen agreements from divorces that happened years prior to the purchase come up in the financing of the buyer, actually, and wrecked havoc in their approval. The members work at times and catch it, but in it being that the buyer can purchase. So even previous agreements that you’ve had years ago can come effect.

One little side to this is, can you just mention bridge financing and firm gap financing approval?

Karim:

Bridge financing is an option for those who, say, you buy today and you try to sell your home and you’re unable to match up the next buyer that you’re finding for your current home with the closing date you have on your purchase side. That’s an example of an opportunity to use a bridge financing there.

But what you’re doing essentially is you’re unlocking the equity of the home you own to bridge that gap between those closing dates. And usually there are conditions to that, of course. So the bank will include these conditions, the lender will include these conditions to protect themselves.

They’ll relate to making sure that the financing, the sale, and the purchase can happen. So they want a firm agreement of sale of your home, and they want a firm agreement to purchase that home that you’re buying.

Nick:

Great. Here’s an open floor question for the two of you. There’s a middle ground called the sale of… like a first refusal condition is what we call them. This allows you to put an offer on a home but it keeps the deal conditional upon selling your own house.

So first of all, can you explain how this works in plain English?

Karim:
Yeah, for sure. So essentially in one sentence, this is a condition that lets you sell your home without fully agreeing to purchase another home. So your agreement of purchase and sale on your home that you’re purchasing will be conditional upon the sale of your property now.

So typically this is a bit of a longer condition. We see them written for four to six weeks. And during those four to six weeks, you are putting your best foot forward to sell your home. And the idea is either by or prior to the end of that condition, you sell your home firm and you’re able to firm up your purchase on that side of things as well.

Karim:
Great. It allows the seller to keep listing their home for sale in that time period. And if the seller gets an offer that they find acceptable or better than the offer that you have—so typically unconditional—they can begin that first refusal clause, which will give you 24 to 72 hours, typically, to either commit to the purchase or back away from the purchase entirely.

Nick:
Yeah. It’s important for somebody considering this to note is that the seller of the property that you are planning to buy has a clause—it’s called an escape clause. They’re still allowed to market their house. They’re still allowed to look at other offers. If they get one that they like better than yours, like you said, they can notify you.

You have a certain amount of time to decide whether you’re going to firm up on your purchase or not. But sometimes you’re not ready. If your house is not sold, you might lose the place that you’re going to purchase. I mean, you haven’t put any money into it other than, say, an inspector and your time.

Chelsea:
I mean, maybe you’re starting to get a touch to it. Emotion.

Nick:
Yeah. Which is not nothing. I mean, you haven’t paid for it yet, so somebody else is going to pay for it.

Nick:
Hey, it’s Nick Fundytus. Question—what’s your favorite social media platform? Are you big on Instagram? Do you read it? No matter where you are, I’d love for you to find me there and connect. All you need to do is type @nickfundytus and follow, and lets you and I connect.

I’d love to be able to provide you the right answers, the right resources, and the right content to help you make your next move. If you send me a question, I always answer back. So subscribe, and I’ll see you there soon.

Nick:
So why—I mean, this seems ideal from the perspective of a person who’s moving and needs to sell their house—so why don’t… isn’t this an option in every scenario? So when do sellers usually say no to a first refusal?

Karim:
Yeah. So from past experience, it’s harder to get accepted in various scenarios. One of those is if it’s a seller’s market, right? So if there’s a lot of buyers out there searching for a home, lots of viewings, so the expected days on market is expected to be shorter. It will be a bit harder or challenging to get that accepted in your offer because some of the buyers—other buyers out there seeing this home as well and who are interested in this home may not need that condition in their offer, right? So it automatically will set you just a little bit lower compared to those others. But I think that’s the biggest one.

It also can limit the negotiation power for a buyer as well as I’ve seen. So if you’re including this in your agreement of purchase and sale, odds are the seller will be a bit more firm on their price just because they’re giving you something, so they’re expecting a little in return, I guess you can say, or look at it that way.

Nick:
Yeah. So in order to accept a conditional first refusal condition from you, a seller says, “Well, it better be a good offer in all other respects.” Because it does tie them to that offer in a way. Yes, they’re still marketing their home for sale in the market, but other buyers can see that there is this first refusal on this house, right? And it might not be as appealing to them as if it wasn’t already there.

Karim:
Yeah.

Nick:
And just in terms of experience with this condition—it varies not even just by market, but by specific homes. So both of you have been involved in first refusal conditions before, and I’ve been involved in both the seller and the buyer side.

We had a really interesting one at the start of this calendar year where Karim brought an offer on one of our listings that we’d had for a while. It was this rural semi-recreational property, and it just takes a long time to sell these places.

Karim brings one, and we accepted a first refusal. But then we found out that the property that they were… were not going to sell then had a first refusal—this place in Belleville. We had no ability to affect this market whatsoever. We thought we were going to be tied to this.

In the meantime, Chelsea, we have somebody call on the house, and Chelsea brings an offer to the house. All of a sudden, Karim and Chelsea are in multiple offers on this house that’s been on in the market for a year, and everything’s looking pretty good for Chelsea.

It was a strong offer. It didn’t have to have a first refusal condition. It looks like it was all going to firm up. I think we gave Karim’s clients, was it 24?

Karim:
48 hours.

Nick:
48 hours. In the last few hours of the 48-hour condition, Karim’s clients firmed up. They are living in this property now. It was while we were doing our charity walk for Coldest Night of the Year last year. Our team does that, and we all go for a beer afterwards.

Chelsea basically says, “Karim, I’m really sorry that my buyer’s got it.” Karim pulls the reverse Uno card and says, “No, it was actually, I got it.” Karim, there was a confusing moment for a second.

Chelsea:
I thought I had that one in the bag.

Nick:
Yeah, you have a little bit of healthy competition, which is great. But you’re both—for such a bizarrely complicated related situation where our team is representing the seller and we’re representing two different buyers—there’s a lot of rules and things in place that make sure that nobody’s interests are getting undermined.

Everybody came out of that. I mean, obviously, the people who didn’t get the house were a little disappointed, but everybody came out of it feeling that they had been treated professionally, which is really important.

Nick:
We got one more for… we have another one for Chelsea. Regardless of the order—buying or selling first—preparation seems to be the constant in what we talk about. If someone is thinking of moving later this year or start of 2026, why is it important to start looking at their current home’s condition now?

Karim:
That’s a big one. In short, if you start looking at it now, it helps you prepare for later. It’s actually why we include the pre-list inspections on all of our listings. We’ll complete that pre-list inspection during the preparation phase.

It’s not us doing the pre-list, right? No, a professional home inspector. We are doing the stick handling of the appointment, but they will be completing—the professional will be completing that appointment or that inspection, I should say.

And it allows us to have a bigger picture. So we discover things that a buyer might discover later on down the road. And it helps us prepare for those things. So if we find out that the furnace is 30 years old, well, we look at it and we say, “Okay, how do we tackle this?”

Is it something that makes sense to fix prior to listing? Can we eliminate that from coming up later on? Is it something that maybe we get an estimate for so we can show buyers how much it’ll cost to replace or repair? Or is it something that maybe we adjust our strategy and we market or list as is and we will discuss with the future buyers down the road?

But it just allows us to see what the future buyer is going to see, and it allows us to even present that to them before they even come to the table with an offer, right? So they can write you an offer with that in mind. And in turn, that helps the seller just be a little bit more prepared and negotiate with that at the back of their mind. So at the end of the day, we usually see it turn out to be a lot better to be prepared, of course, than to go into it a little bit blind.

Nick:
Yeah. And the pre-list inspection is just one of a suite that we do. We tell clients—especially if it’s somebody that we’ve worked before—I mean, it’s harder if you’ve never met somebody before and they’re already coming… we’ll talk to you at the point where close to when they need to list, and we’ll talk more about that.

But if it’s somebody that we’ve worked before, we always harp on: it’s never too early to come and ask us questions. There’s no dumb questions. And especially like that pre-list inspection—the stagers. I think you can have a stager come. If you were moving in five years, you could probably have a stager come to your house now. We include it.

We’ve got no problem to do that. We’ve got great stagers who will come up and do a consultation because they will give you a list of things to tackle that will help your home to sell faster and for more money. But instead of doing it all in the last week, you can do it like a weekend here and a weekend there.

You can wait for the community electronics dump to go get rid of a bunch of old stuff to go there.

All right, Karim, I’ve got one for you. When we meet a client who wants to move quickly, but their home isn’t ready for market, how does that complicate the process? What are the risks of rushing a listing to market?

Karim:
Really, the biggest risk of it is to present the listing in its worst light or non-ideal light. To rush a listing to market wouldn’t allow you to prepare it as you probably should. Often we include that pre-list consultation with the stager, cleaning, because a place that’s decluttered, maybe a bit painted, with good lighting and clean, shows way better—ultimately for more money than the listing that hasn’t been prepared in the same way.

I guess the risk of waiting to the last minute is not having the time to do these—or to just not do them properly. Doing them properly, we will often say it’s better to take an extra week, even in the spring. It’s better to take another week to get to market and do it properly than to just throw it on the market.

Because especially in the spring, there’s a lot of competition for your home, whether it’s a buyer’s market or a seller’s market. Sometimes lots of the properties look just like your home, and you want to be the one that stands out in a good way. By preparing and doing little touch-ups and staging and disclosing things, repairing things that you need, you can enlarge the buyer pool—just grow the number of people who will look and put your home on a consideration list.

There are not that many people who want to move into a place where they got to do a bunch of work, and it’s apparent that they have to do a bunch of work, and so don’t limit yourself just to those people.

Just to add to—first impressions are everything. Even if you take that extra week to get everything tidied up, it’ll have a much greater effect than if you were to do it a week into it being on the market and buyers having already seen it in the past state. So yeah, much more worthwhile.

Nick:

It’s been a million years since I went on a first date. But it’s like—it is a little bit like a first date, right? I would rather wait till next Friday and know that I was going to look good… you have your haircut. I’m ready for a haircut. Know that I was going to look good rather than go rush out, like come straight from the gym or something like that.

Karim:
Yeah, they’re red flags, too. If you walk into a house and nothing’s taken care of, you’re like, “Yeah, this is all I can see.” But maybe you wonder, what else have they overlooked? What else have they not been taking care of in the last whatever years they’ve owned the house?

Nick:
So again, it’s this—first impressions are super important in selling a home. Excellent.

Okay, so for a family listening, especially a family who feels a bit overwhelmed by the logistics of moving up, what is the first simple step they should take this week to get clarity if they’re thinking of moving? I’ll throw this to both of you.

Karim:
Yeah, I’d say the biggest and most impactful first step that you can do is find a Realtor who you trust and find a mortgage broker that you trust and talk to them both. That way you can start seeing what your home is worth, and you can talk to your mortgage broker to see what you can afford. And that’ll just open up a lot. It’ll give you a lot of clarity and open up a lot of next steps for you.

Nick:
Yeah. Those people are connectors, right? Like, Realtor and Realtor—they’re connectors. So they’ll put you in touch with the right people to set you up for success, really, for a smoother transition from your current home to the next one.

Yeah. Obviously, in Ottawa, that means that you go call you or me or you here. You should call Karim Ali or Chelsea Angus or Nick Fundytus if you want to make a move. If you’re in some other town, you can call whoever you want.

We actually know really good Realtors in a lot of cities across Canada. For some reason, if you’re listening to this in Okotoks, Alberta, and you want a recommendation there, I can give you somebody.

But talk to those people first. If you’re interviewing a few Realtors, go interview a few Realtors. There’s no harm in reaching out early. Any Realtor that tells you you don’t need to talk to them yet—that’s going to be a good sign that they’re not going to take the approach like they’re just going to throw your listing on when it’s time.

Go talk to somebody who wants to freely give you information and give you the right steps. We’re always happy to help answer your questions if you’re looking to make a move, or even if you’re just wondering how the whole process works.

We very much welcome any questions or comments on this episode. Of course, if you have moving questions, you can reach out to Chels or Karim or myself.

Just as a way of closing out our first episode back here—thank you very much, Karim and Chels, for coming on. I really appreciate you guys taking your first time as podcast guests in the studio.

Now, if you take one thing away from today, it is that you have options. So whether it is negotiating a longer closing, using something like bridge financing, or looking at specific conditions in your offer, you don’t have to figure it out alone. It is never too early to ask questions.

If you’re thinking about making a move, let’s sit down, look at your specific numbers, and build a plan that keeps your stress levels down. We can never take your stress away completely, but we can certainly keep it manageable.

You can find links to our articles on Timing the Market and Buying When You Have to Sell in our show notes for a deeper dive, or on our website at nickfundytus.ca.

I’m Nick Fundytus. This is Karim Ali. This is Chelsea Angus. We’re the Nick Fundytus team, and this is Realtor In Your Pocket. Thank you very much for listening and watching.

Chelsea & Karim:
Thanks.

Nick:
What is “People First” when it comes to real estate?

After all, we’re buying and selling properties. So is it really about people?

People First just means that people are more important than properties. It means that at the heart of every move, there’s a human story. And that’s why my team and I have to be excellent for you every time you buy or sell a home.

That’s why we take so much time to educate all our clients on the market and on the process. That’s why we are continually improving our processes, honing our negotiation skills so that you know you are getting Ottawa’s best when you work with us.

That’s why we stay in touch year after year with our past clients, because I believe—and we believe as a team—that being a business in Ottawa means that we have an obligation to our community: to improve it, to serve it, and to connect the people who live in it.

In an era where property sales are often prioritized over people, our team puts relationships first. One client at a time, one relationship at a time. That’s People First Real Estate.