Bridge financing
Sometimes the timing problem isn't whether your home has sold.
It's when the money becomes available.
Your existing home may have a firm sale, but possession doesn't occur until after you need to complete the purchase of your next property.
Bridge financing is generally a short-term financing solution that may allow qualified homeowners to access equity from a firm sale before the proceeds are available on closing.
It exists to solve a gap measured in days or weeks, not a shortfall in what you can afford. It is not a way to buy a home you could not otherwise complete — it is a way to smooth the sequence when the two closings don't line up.
The situation is almost always the same shape:
Without it, the options narrow quickly: move the possession dates, find the money elsewhere, or move twice.
Requirements vary by lender, by borrower and by transaction. There is no single checklist that applies everywhere, and any source presenting one as universal is overstating it.
That said, the question lenders are answering is consistent: how certain is the money that repays this?
A firm sale — conditions removed on your existing home — is commonly required for exactly that reason. Beyond it, expect the lender to look at your overall financing, the two closing dates and your qualifications, and expect the specifics to differ between lenders.
Rates and fees vary by lender, borrower and transaction.
We deliberately do not publish rate figures here. Lending terms move, a number written into a web page does not, and a stale figure is worse than no figure — people plan around it. Your mortgage professional gives you the current cost for your actual situation.
What is reasonable to expect is that a short-term facility of this kind carries a cost, and that there may be set-up or administration fees alongside the interest. Ask for the all-in cost over the actual number of days you need it — that is the figure that matters, and it is often smaller in absolute terms than people assume because the period is short.
Lender policies vary on maximum term, and we are not going to state a universal maximum because there isn't one.
The practical point is that bridge financing is designed for a short gap. The longer the gap between your two closings, the more likely you are outside what is comfortably available — which is an argument for negotiating the possession dates closer together in the first place.
These get conflated and they are not the same thing.
Bridging assumes your home is sold. The buyer is committed, the money is coming, and you are covering a short, defined gap until it arrives. The risk is largely timing.
Carrying two properties means you own both and one is unsold. There is no confirmed buyer and no known end date. The risk is open-ended, and it is a fundamentally different financial position.
Both may be workable. They should not be planned for as if they were interchangeable.
This is the part that goes wrong most often, and it is entirely avoidable.
Possession dates get agreed on both transactions, and only afterwards does anyone check whether the bridge that the whole structure depends on is actually available. By then the dates are contractual.
Confirm eligibility before you structure a transaction that relies on it. Our clients work with Al Zayat, who confirms what is available and how it interacts with the rest of your mortgage — while the dates are still negotiable.
Let's establish what's available before the possession dates are locked in — not after.
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