Many sellers are holding off selling due to current market conditions and lower selling prices. What many sellers dont understand, however, is that if they are going to sell and buy a more expensive home (buy up), then NOW, in the current market, is the best time to do just that - buy up.

If sellers wait until the market goes back up, and their home's value increases, then the homes they are looking at to buy will also have gone up in price.

So... let me explain. Lets say the seller's current home was valued a while back at $700,000. Let's assume, for example, that market values have decreased 10%; their home is currently worth $700,000 minus the 10% drop in value ($70,000), which is $630,000. In addition, the price range they want to buy in is, let's say, $900,000 (remember, they want to buy "up". )Assuming the more expensive homes dropped 10% in value, too (often even more of a drop in higher-end homes), then that would mean the $900,000 homes dropped $100,000 to about $800,000.

The seller sells their home for  $70,000 less than they "could " have sold it for before the market dropped. However, they buy the more expensive home for $100,000 LESS than they could have bought it before the market dropped. So, they "lost" $70,000 and then bought another home and "saved" $100,000. The math tells us that THE SELLER JUST MADE $30,000 IN EQUITY! This difference gets more dramatic the higher you buy up.

The bottom line: selling in a down market and buying a more expensive home, assuming both properties have depreciated at roughly the same rate, is a SMART thing to do. A seller can actually come out ahead by doing this. Waiting for the market to head  "back up" can actually cost the seller more money than buying up in a down market.