One benefit of selling your own home before you buy is that you know how much money you have to play with, and you can wait for the right price.

The downside of selling your own home before you buy is that you may be forced to rent while you look for a new home and then you may have to move twice (i.e. to your rented home and then to the property you buy). This is both time consuming and costly (i.e. cost of two moves, two utility connections etc).

However, you may be able to avoid this by negotiating a long settlement period with the person buying your house.

Another risk of selling before you buy is that property prices may rise while you are ‘out of the market’, which means you will get less for your money when it’s time to buy. The longer the gap between buying and selling a home the bigger this risk will be (although in a flat or falling market this may not be the case).