You don't need to accept a contingent offer. You don't need to move twice. You don't need to give up your sub-4% rate on a home you can't fit anymore. There's a way through — and it isn't a gimmick.
15-minute call with Veronica. No credit pull. No pressure.
You know the floor plan you want. You've driven past the house twice. You know the school cutoff is August 12th. The third bedroom became an office in 2021 and a nursery in 2023 and now you're brushing teeth in a hallway.
But your mortgage is 3.1%. Selling means giving that up. Buying first means a contingent offer no one will accept. Selling first means renting — twice the moves, twice the chaos, kids in a hotel for six weeks. So you wait. And the house gets smaller.
"We made an offer in March. They said yes — if we sold first. We sold first. The buyer's loan fell through eleven days before closing. We were already packed."
— A family I talked out of doing this again, January
87%
of contingent offers in Central Florida were rejected outright in the last 12 months
2.4x
average price increase the seller's home accepted over a contingent equivalent
14 mo
average time a "we'll move next year" family stays stuck in this exact loop
This is a bridge product, not a gimmick. We don't buy your house. We don't take a stake. We unlock the equity you've already earned so you can write a non-contingent offer on the next one — and sell the old one calmly, on your terms, vacant and staged.
We pull a soft credit check, look at your equity position, and confirm your debt-to-income on the new payment. No hard pull. No commitment. If you don't qualify, I'll tell you on the call — and tell you exactly what would change that.
Typical qualifying profile: 25%+ equity · 700+ FICO · stable W-2 or 2-year self-employed
You write a non-contingent offer on your next home. No "subject to sale of buyer's property." No 30-day kick-out. You look like the cleanest buyer at the table — because you are. Sellers say yes. Often at a lower price than the contingent buyer offering more.
Average accepted offer is 2.4% below comparable contingent offers · proven across 11 closed Fig Team transactions in 2024
Close on the new house. Move in. Take the time you need to pack the old place properly — not a frenzied weekend, not a storage unit, not a hotel with three kids and a dog. Most families take 21 to 45 days. You decide.
During bridge: you carry both mortgages, interest-only on the bridge portion · we list the old house empty and staged
Vacant, staged homes sell 17% faster and net 3-6% more than occupied ones — that's not a Fig Team number, that's NAR data. When your old house closes, the bridge is paid off from proceeds. You walk away with the equity difference, the new house, and your weekends back.
Average old-home days-on-market across our bridge clients in 2024: 19 days · 96% of list price
Real Central Florida numbers from a closed Fig Team transaction this spring. Family of five, Winter Park to Lake Mary, $725K next home, $540K current home. Here's what their two paths looked like.
Sell first, rent, then buy.
Buy first, move once, sell empty.
Difference to this family: +$42,150
Plus eight weeks of their life they didn't spend in a rental. Plus the August school start they would have missed. Plus the bedroom set they didn't have to sell on Facebook Marketplace.
If one of these reads like your group text from last Tuesday, we should probably talk. If none of them do, the bridge probably isn't right for you — and I'll be the first to say so.
You bought in 2019 thinking you had room. The office became a nursery. The guest room became a teenager. The dog sleeps in the hallway. You need four bedrooms and a yard. You don't need a six-month emotional spiral to get there.
Kindergarten orientation, magnet program acceptance, a specific high school baseball coach — whatever it is, the calendar is doing the negotiating now. You need to be in the new zone before the bus route is finalized. A contingent offer is not the move.
A health event happened, or is about to. You need an in-law suite, a single-story floor plan, or a house ten minutes closer. The timeline is medical, not market. You don't have a season to wait — and you definitely don't have one to spend in temporary housing.
The kids are gone. The 4,200 square feet is loud in a different way now. You want the patio home in the gated community, the maintenance-free lock-and-leave, the smaller everything. But you are not — under any circumstance — moving twice in your sixties.
Real Fig Team transactions from the last 14 months. Names changed for privacy. Numbers, neighborhoods, and timelines are not.
Family of five, third child due in May. Needed four bedrooms and a yard before the baby. Closed on the new house April 2nd, baby arrived May 11th, old house sold May 27th.
32
bridge days
14
DOM
99%
of list
Magnet program zone change for their middle daughter. August deadline. Wrote a non-contingent offer on June 18th, won against three other bidders. In the new house by July 24th.
21
bridge days
9
DOM
102%
of list
Mom moving in, needed a first-floor primary and an in-law suite. Found the house in 19 days. Bridged for 28 days. Old house sold to a cash investor for 96% of list, vacant.
28
bridge days
11
DOM
96%
of list
Empty nesters. Sold the 4,100 sq ft to downsize to a 2,400 sq ft patio home. Refused to move twice. The bridge closed in 38 days, old house sold the second weekend it was listed.
38
bridge days
12
DOM
98%
of list
2.8% mortgage they refused to lose. Couldn't accept a contingent timeline. Bridged to the Audubon Park craftsman, kept the 30-year lock on the next loan. Old house sold in 17 days at full ask.
26
bridge days
17
DOM
100%
of list
Husband took a new role downtown, wife wanted walkability. Bought the Thornton Park townhouse non-contingent in a multi-offer scenario, beat a higher cash offer. Old place sold vacant in 8 days.
19
bridge days
8
DOM
103%
of list
Most of this business runs on handshakes and hope. Ours runs on signed addenda. Here's what we put in writing before you agree to anything.
If we haven't put you under contract on a home you actually want within 90 days of starting the search, you can cancel the buyer agreement. No fees. No clawback. No drama. We don't get paid until you're in the right house.
If your old house hasn't sold within 120 days of listing — at the price we agreed on together — our lender partner will buy it from you at that price. Not a lowball. Not an estimator. The number we shook hands on.
The bridge fee is locked at signing — flat, transparent, in your closing disclosure. If your old house takes 12 days to sell or 90, you pay the same fee. No daily meter. No surprise interest accrual. No fine print that triggers on day 31.
We had been looking for fourteen months. Made offers on four houses, all rejected because we were contingent. Veronica laid out the bridge math on a Tuesday and by the next Tuesday we were under contract in Lake Mary. Our old house sold empty in nine days for $11,000 over what we'd been told to list it at.
The Hernandez family
Winter Park → Lake Mary · Moved March 2024 · 32 bridge days
I will be transparent. I called Veronica thinking she would sell me on something. She actually spent the first call telling me why three of her other clients should NOT have done the bridge. That's when I knew. We closed in August, kid started kindergarten on time, and I cried in the kitchen of the empty old house the day we sold it. Good cry.
The Brennan family
Dr. Phillips → Windermere · Moved July 2024 · 21 bridge days
My mother had a fall in late August. We needed a single-story with an in-law suite within thirty days or we were looking at assisted living. Veronica took my call at 9:30pm. We were in the new house by September 26th. The bridge fee was less than the assisted living deposit would have been. That's the entire story.
The Park family
Baldwin Park → Maitland · Moved September 2024 · 28 bridge days
I started in this business in 2008 — which means my first three years were spent watching families lose homes they loved because the timing didn't work and the financing wouldn't bend. That experience shaped everything about how The Fig Team operates now.
We are not the largest team in Central Florida. We are the team that says no the most. We turn down roughly four out of every ten consultations because the math doesn't work or the timing isn't right. The families we do take on get the entire bench — lender, transaction coordinator, listing prep crew, and me on the phone when it matters.
If you're reading this far, you probably have a real situation. Call the number above. Tell me what's going on. I'll tell you honestly whether the bridge fits or whether you should wait six months. Either way you'll hang up knowing more than you did when you called.
These are the six questions I get on every first call. Read them now and the conversation moves faster.
For a typical Central Florida move — say you're selling a $525,000 house and buying a $675,000 one — the locked bridge fee runs between $7,400 and $9,800 depending on the loan structure. That is the total, all-in cost. Not per month. Not per day. One number, disclosed at signing, printed on your closing disclosure. We've had clients spend less than that on a single round of paint and staging trying to sell-first. The bridge usually comes out cheaper than the alternative once you count the price drop, the temporary housing, and the second move.
No. That's exactly what the 120-day buy-back guarantee is for. If your old house hasn't sold at the price we agreed on within 120 days of listing, our lender partner buys it from you at that price. Not an algorithm estimate. Not a lowball offer. The number we sat at your kitchen table and shook hands on. In the seven years we've run this program, we've had to invoke it eleven times out of roughly 340 bridge transactions. The reason it's so rare is that we don't take on a listing unless we already know how it sells. We price it that way from day one.
That's the whole point of the bridge structure — you don't. The lender uses the equity in your current home as the qualifying asset for the new purchase, so your debt-to-income ratio is calculated as if the old house is already sold. Most of our clients qualify with the exact same income and credit profile they would have used if they'd sold first. We've had clients with retirement income, self-employed schedule-C income, and 1099 contractor income all clear underwriting in under three weeks. The bridge is built for this scenario specifically — that's why it exists.
From first call to keys in your hand, the average is 38 days. The fastest we've done it was 19 days (the Park family — Mom had fallen and we had a hard deadline). The slowest realistic timeline is about 50 days, usually because of an appraisal scheduling delay or a HOA estoppel that drags. If you're calling in May for an August move, you're early. If you're calling in mid-July for an August move, we can still make it work, but the conversation has to happen this week, not next.
Because the bridge is a precision tool, not a hammer. About 40% of the people who call us either don't have enough equity in the current home to make the math work, or they're in a price band where the carrying cost overwhelms the convenience, or they have a flexible timeline and would genuinely be better served selling first. Saying yes to those families would mean charging them a fee to solve a problem they don't have. We'd rather lose the transaction and keep the trust. About a third of the families we turn down end up calling us back twelve to eighteen months later when their situation has shifted. That math works for everyone.
The first call is 22 minutes on average. I ask you four things: where you are now, where you need to be, when, and why. From those four answers I can usually tell you within ten minutes whether the bridge is the right move, the wrong move, or whether we need a follow-up call with the lender to run real numbers. I don't ask for your social, I don't pull credit, I don't send a docusign. If at the end of the call you want to keep going, we schedule a working session. If you don't, we hang up and you've lost nothing but 22 minutes — and you'll know more about the Central Florida market than 90% of the agents who'd love to take your listing.
Still have a question that isn't on the list? That's usually the most important one. Bring it to the call.
No credit pull. No commitment. Just a real conversation.
