Ask an agent this before you sign anything.
“If I sell this house, where am I going, and how do we make sure I’m not homeless in between?”
Watch what happens next.
Because the answer tells you almost everything.
Why this one question works
Most agents are great at half the job.
They’ll list your house. They’ll take nice photos. They’ll put a sign in the yard and wait.
That’s fine if you’re only selling.
But you’re not only selling.
You’re a move-up seller. You’ve outgrown the starter home in Belmont or Bethany, and you need to land somewhere bigger in Wilderness Hills or the Pine Lake corridor.
That’s two transactions stitched together with your family’s whole life in the seam.
Sell, buy, prep, move. At the same time. With a job and kids in the mix.
So when you ask an agent how they handle the in-between, you’re really asking: do you have a plan, or do you just have a lockbox?
The answer that should worry you
If the agent says “we’ll cross that bridge when we get there” – that’s your answer.
If they say “let’s just get it listed and see what happens” – that’s your answer.
If they get quiet – that’s your answer.
Here’s what nobody tells you.
The gap between selling and buying is where move-up families get crushed. It’s where the double move happens. It’s where you sign a lease you didn’t want, pay two housing costs at once, or panic-buy the wrong house because the clock is running.
An agent who only markets homes isn’t thinking about that gap.
You have to think about it for them.
What a real answer sounds like
A real answer has a sequence in it.
It sounds like: here’s how we time the sale so it lines up with the purchase. Here’s what we do if the next house shows up first. Here’s what we do if your house sells fast. Here’s how we get your place ready without you living in a construction zone.
That’s a plan.
That’s what I built The Move-Up Method to do.
Five steps, in order.
PLAN. We sit down, dig into the real why, map the financing, and map the sale of your current house against a rough timeline.
PREP. This is where HomePrep+ comes in. I front and project-manage the prep – paint, carpet, cleanouts, the roof if it needs it – so you don’t write a check up front or live around drop cloths for a month.
SEARCH. We find the right next house on your criteria, not a rushed one.
SELL. We sell the current house prepped, for what it’s actually worth.
MOVING. We coordinate the actual move so the hardest week isn’t on your family alone.
One sequence. One move instead of two.
That’s where I come in.
The other questions worth asking
Once you’ve asked the big one, a few more will tell you who you’re dealing with.
- “Who handles my prep?” If the answer is “you do,” know that going in. If a leaky roof or dated carpet is what’s holding you hostage, you want someone who can front it and manage it – not a to-do list handed back to you.
- “What happens if my house sells before I find the next one?” A good agent has already thought about this. A great one has a fallback that doesn’t put you in a hotel.
- “Have you done this exact thing – a family moving up – recently?” Selling a house and coordinating a move-up are not the same skill. Ask for the difference.
- “Can I talk to someone you did this for?” I’ve got 100+ 5-star Google reviews for a reason. The story behind each one is a family that got unstuck.
The point isn’t to trap the agent
Look, this isn’t a gotcha.
Lincoln has a lot of good agents. Genuinely.
But very few have a system you can hand a stranger and trust them to run start to finish. Most are improvising the part that matters most to you.
You’re not paying for a sign in the yard.
You’re paying to get out of the gap between the house you have and the house you need – without the rate panic, without the repair wall, without the spiral.
So before you sign with anyone, ask them how they handle the in-between.
If they don’t have an answer, keep looking.
The right agent will already have the plan drawn up.
If your family is feeling the squeeze of a house you’ve outgrown, this is the exact framework I walk Lincoln families through – selling, buying, prepping, and moving without the chaos: See how the Move-Up Method works →