New city, new job, old house — sell it before your first day

Job relocations run on a calendar that has nothing to do with real estate. The offer letter says four weeks; the average Sacramento listing takes three or four months from sign-in-the-yard to keys-handed-over. That gap is where relocating owners lose money, sleep, or both.

The two-mortgage trap

The standard relocation play is to move, rent or buy in the new city, and let the old house sell behind you. It works fine until it doesn't: an empty house shows worse, insurance costs more once it's vacant, and every month unsold is a mortgage payment, taxes, utilities, and yard care paid from a city away. Six months of that on a typical Sacramento payment can quietly eat five figures — which is a strange way to protect your sale price.

Close on your schedule, not the market's

Our closing date is genuinely yours to pick. Some sellers want the fastest version: offer Monday, close the following week, wire hits before the moving truck leaves. Others want to close in 45 days, after the kids finish the school year, and stay in the house until the last box is out. Both are normal for us. If you need a few days between closing and handing over keys, we write that into the agreement.

No showings while your life is in boxes

Anyone who has kept a house "showing ready" for six weeks while also packing it knows the specific misery involved. With us there's one walkthrough, before the chaos peaks, and that's it. Pack like nobody's coming to judge the garage, because nobody is.

What about renting it out instead?

Fair question, and for some owners it's the right answer. But long-distance landlording is a job: 2% of the home's value a year in maintenance is a common rule of thumb, plus a property manager taking 8–10% of rent, plus vacancies, plus California tenant law to keep up with from another state. If you've got the temperament for it, great. If the honest answer is that you just don't want to decide right now, a clean sale and cash in the bank is the simpler kind of freedom.