A family in the Inner West found their next home before their current one had even hit the market.
The standard advice says sell first, buy second. Clean, safe, sensible. It also means renting in between, moving twice, and hoping the right house is still there when you're ready. For a family with two kids and a school year in motion, that wasn't a plan. It was a gamble dressed up as caution.
So we looked at bridging finance. And here's the part most people never get walked through.
A bridging loan temporarily carries both properties at once. The combined total is called your peak debt. Once your existing home sells, the proceeds pay that down, and what's left becomes your ongoing loan, known as the end debt. During the bridge, repayments can be interest only, or the interest can be added to the balance so nothing is due until the sale settles.
The loan itself wasn't the risky part. The assumptions were.
What if the house took five months to sell instead of two? What if it settled below the agent's estimate? We stress-tested the end debt against a slower sale and a softer price before they signed anything. The numbers still held. That's what gave them the confidence to exchange.
They moved once. The kids changed nothing. The old house sold seven weeks later, inside the range we'd modelled.
Bridging finance isn't for everyone, and it's never a decision to make on optimism. But for the right situation, tested properly, it turns an impossible timeline into a manageable one.
If you've found the right place at the wrong time, it's worth running the numbers before you rule it out.
My Mortgage Concierge is licensed under ACL 392736 Sattout Accounting Services Pty Ltd. General information only — seek personal advice before acting.
