Trading Up in Foothills Club West

You have outgrown where you are. Another child, a job that is now permanently at the kitchen table, or the slow realization that the starter house was always a starter house.

Trading up in Foothills Club West is rarely difficult because of what is for sale. It is difficult because you have to sell something and buy something, and the order you do them in has consequences measured in tens of thousands of dollars and several weeks of not knowing where you will sleep.

There is a local detail that catches people here. Moving between named neighborhoods inside Club West means a new set of tract declarations as well as a new house. Vistas, Montana Vista, Rosewood Canyon Estates, Whistling Rock and Fairway each carry their own on top of the master CC&Rs, so the rules you have lived under for a decade are not the rules you are moving into.

What you get from me is both transactions run as one plan, with your equity and financing looked at properly before anything is listed, so the sequencing decision is made with numbers rather than a rule of thumb.

Run separately, a sale and a purchase fight each other. Run together, every date is chosen deliberately. The selling half is at the six-step listing process and the buying half at how I help you buy.

• Numbers first. I map your equity, your carrying capacity and what your current home is realistically worth, priced from your named neighborhood rather than Club West at large.
• The sequencing call. Selling first gives you certainty and a stronger offer, and risks a gap with money and nowhere to live. Buying first removes that and risks carrying two properties. I lay both out against your position. You choose.
• Prepare the sale properly. The walkthrough, the trades, the staging consultation and the photography all happen before you are under time pressure. That step is here, and it protects your next down payment.
• Read the new rules before you fall for the house. Your target neighborhood's tract declarations may permit or prohibit things your current one does not. Better known at showing than at closing.
• Write the purchase with the right structure. Contingent offer, rent-back, extended close: which is credible depends on the specific seller, and I will tell you honestly how yours is likely to be received.
• Both closings, one coordinator. My transaction coordinator tracks both sets of dates so nothing depends on you remembering an appraisal deadline during a move.