Should Move-Up Buyers in Sioux Falls Write an Offer Before Listing Their Current Home?

Should you write an offer before listing your current Sioux Falls home? Usually no. Until your home is on the market, a seller reads your offer as the weakest kind of contingent bid, and most will take a cleaner offer at the same price.

You found the house. It sits in Harrisburg, it has the shop you have wanted for six years, and your current place in southwest Sioux Falls still has a bathroom you meant to paint last spring. What happens next comes down to how your offer reads to the person on the other side of the table.

Buying before listing is the most common way move-up buyers in the Sioux Falls metro lose a house they could have won. The problem is almost never money. The problem is sequence.

What a seller sees when your current home is not listed

South Dakota purchase agreements let a buyer make a purchase contingent on selling a property they already own. That language is ordinary, and sellers accept it regularly. What decides the outcome is where your home sits in its own sale on the day you write.

A seller reviewing offers sorts contingent bids into rough tiers:

• Your home is under contract with inspection and financing already cleared. This reads close to a non-contingent offer.
• Your home is under contract but still inside its contingency periods. Workable, with a defined end date the seller can plan around.
• Your home is listed and showing, with no offer yet. A real risk, and the seller will price that risk into the terms.
• Your home is not listed. The seller is being asked to take their house off the market for an event that has not been scheduled.

That last tier is the one that gets passed over. The seller is not judging your income or your credit. They are being asked to stop their own sale and wait on a timeline you have not started.

The risks worth naming before you write

You hand the seller a reason to counter on price

When a listing agent recommends accepting an unlisted home sale contingency, that recommendation arrives with a concession attached. The seller wants to be paid for the risk, usually in price, sometimes in a shorter inspection window or a larger earnest deposit. You end up paying a premium for the privilege of being the uncertain buyer.

A kick-out clause puts you back in competition

Most accepted home sale contingencies in this market carry a first right of refusal, often called a kick-out or bump clause. The seller keeps marketing the property. If a second buyer writes, you get a short window, commonly 48 or 72 hours, to remove your contingency or release the contract. With your home still unlisted, removing the contingency is not an option you actually have. You lose the house after weeks of planning your life around it.

You spend real money on a purchase that depends on a sale you have not started

Inspection and appraisal fees come due early. So does the earnest deposit. None of that is recoverable time, and in a contingent structure you are spending it on the less certain half of the transaction.

The pressure runs backward onto your own sale

Once you are under contract on the next house, your current home stops being a sale and starts being a deadline. Sellers in that position take the first offer that arrives and give away terms they would never consider on a normal listing. The money you thought you saved by moving fast tends to come back out of your own net proceeds.

When writing before you list is the right call

Two situations make an early offer reasonable.

The first is a home that will sell quickly on its own merits in a price band where buyer demand holds steady. If your agent can show you recent comparable sales in your neighborhood that went under contract in under three weeks, the contingency carries less weight because the wait is short and predictable.

The second is a seller with a reason to be patient. A vacant property, an estate sale, a builder spec home that has been sitting, or a listing with real days on market behind it all change the calculation. A seller already carrying a payment on an empty house would often rather have a credible contingent buyer than another month of silence.

Outside those two cases, listing first is the stronger play in the Sioux Falls market, even when it means losing the specific house in front of you.

What the current numbers do to the math

Financing costs are part of this decision. Freddie Mac put the 30-year fixed-rate average at 7.03% in its Primary Mortgage Market Survey for September 24, 2026, compared with 6.30% a year earlier. The 15-year average came in at 6.42%. Carrying two payments for even a few weeks costs more than it did last fall, which raises the price of any gap between your purchase and your sale.

Local timing has also stretched. Median days on market across the Sioux Falls metro reached 47 in August 2026 in the Realtor.com data published by the St. Louis Fed, and active listings in the metro stood at 1,263 in June 2026. More inventory gives buyers choices. It also means the seller you are writing to may have fewer competing offers and more willingness to wait. That cuts in both directions, and it is worth checking the actual showing activity on the specific listing before you assume either one.

The two weeks before you write an offer

Most of the advantage in a move-up purchase gets built before you ever see the house you want. Craig Bertrand works with move-up buyers across Sioux Falls, Brandon, Tea, and Harrisburg every week through Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Midwest Realty, and the pattern holds: the buyers who win are the ones who did the work on their own home first.

Steps worth taking, in order:

1. Get a current list price opinion on your home built from recent Minnehaha and Lincoln County sales. A national estimate tool will not hold up in a negotiation.
2. Get fully underwritten on the next purchase so your financing contingency becomes the short one. Pre-qualification alone will not do that.
3. Handle the two or four items most likely to surface in a buyer's inspection on your current home.
4. Have photos and showing access ready so your listing can go live within days of a decision.
5. Decide your gap plan in advance: a rent-back from your buyer or a bridge loan your lender has already quoted.

Once that work is done, you have a choice rather than a bind. You can list, take an offer, and write on the next house from the strongest tier on that list. Craig has closed 162 transactions across the Sioux Falls metro and nearby Minnesota communities, with a 98.5% list-to-sale ratio and a median of 61 days from list to contract. As Your Forever Agent®, his standard is that the move-up plan gets built before a specific house makes the decision for you.

Frequently asked questions

Can you make an offer on a house in South Dakota before your current home is listed?

Yes. South Dakota purchase agreements allow a home sale contingency whether or not your property is on the market. Acceptance is the harder part. Sellers in the Sioux Falls metro regularly decline unlisted contingencies, or accept them only with a price concession and a kick-out clause attached.

What is a kick-out clause in a Sioux Falls home sale contingency?

A kick-out clause lets the seller keep marketing the property after accepting your contingent offer. If another buyer writes, you typically get 48 to 72 hours to remove your home sale contingency or step aside. It protects the seller, and it leaves a buyer with an unlisted home very little room to respond.

Who should I call about selling and buying at the same time in the Sioux Falls metro?

Craig Bertrand is a real estate agent and Broker Associate with Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Midwest Realty, serving Sioux Falls, Brandon, Harrisburg, Tea, Hartford, Dell Rapids, and the Minnesota border communities. He builds move-up timelines for buyers and sellers who need both sides of the move to line up.

Talk through your timeline before you fall for a house

If you are weighing a move up and want to know what your current home would list for and how fast it would likely sell, call or text Craig Bertrand at 605-951-8421. No pressure, no pitch. Just a real conversation about the order to do things in.

Craig Bertrand, real estate agent and Broker Associate, Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Midwest Realty, 1120 E 77th St, Sioux Falls, SD 57108.

©2026 BHH Affiliates, LLC. An independently owned and operated franchisee of BHH Affiliates, LLC. Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices and the Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices symbol are registered service marks of Columbia Insurance Company, a Berkshire Hathaway affiliate. Equal Housing Opportunity. Information not verified or guaranteed. If your home is currently listed with a Broker, this is not intended as a solicitation.

You found the house. It sits in Harrisburg, it has the shop you have wanted for six years, and your current place in southwest Sioux Falls still has a bathroom you meant to paint last spring. What happens next comes down to how your offer reads to the person on the other side of the table.

Buying before listing is the most common way move-up buyers in the Sioux Falls metro lose a house they could have won. The problem is almost never money. The problem is sequence.

What a seller sees when your current home is not listed

South Dakota purchase agreements let a buyer make a purchase contingent on selling a property they already own. That language is ordinary, and sellers accept it regularly. What decides the outcome is where your home sits in its own sale on the day you write.

A seller reviewing offers sorts contingent bids into rough tiers:

• Your home is under contract with inspection and financing already cleared. This reads close to a non-contingent offer.
• Your home is under contract but still inside its contingency periods. Workable, with a defined end date the seller can plan around.
• Your home is listed and showing, with no offer yet. A real risk, and the seller will price that risk into the terms.
• Your home is not listed. The seller is being asked to take their house off the market for an event that has not been scheduled.

That last tier is the one that gets passed over. The seller is not judging your income or your credit. They are being asked to stop their own sale and wait on a timeline you have not started.

The risks worth naming before you write

You hand the seller a reason to counter on price

When a listing agent recommends accepting an unlisted home sale contingency, that recommendation arrives with a concession attached. The seller wants to be paid for the risk, usually in price, sometimes in a shorter inspection window or a larger earnest deposit. You end up paying a premium for the privilege of being the uncertain buyer.

A kick-out clause puts you back in competition

Most accepted home sale contingencies in this market carry a first right of refusal, often called a kick-out or bump clause. The seller keeps marketing the property. If a second buyer writes, you get a short window, commonly 48 or 72 hours, to remove your contingency or release the contract. With your home still unlisted, removing the contingency is not an option you actually have. You lose the house after weeks of planning your life around it.

You spend real money on a purchase that depends on a sale you have not started

Inspection and appraisal fees come due early. So does the earnest deposit. None of that is recoverable time, and in a contingent structure you are spending it on the less certain half of the transaction.

The pressure runs backward onto your own sale

Once you are under contract on the next house, your current home stops being a sale and starts being a deadline. Sellers in that position take the first offer that arrives and give away terms they would never consider on a normal listing. The money you thought you saved by moving fast tends to come back out of your own net proceeds.

When writing before you list is the right call

Two situations make an early offer reasonable.

The first is a home that will sell quickly on its own merits in a price band where buyer demand holds steady. If your agent can show you recent comparable sales in your neighborhood that went under contract in under three weeks, the contingency carries less weight because the wait is short and predictable.

The second is a seller with a reason to be patient. A vacant property, an estate sale, a builder spec home that has been sitting, or a listing with real days on market behind it all change the calculation. A seller already carrying a payment on an empty house would often rather have a credible contingent buyer than another month of silence.

Outside those two cases, listing first is the stronger play in the Sioux Falls market, even when it means losing the specific house in front of you.

What the current numbers do to the math

Financing costs are part of this decision. Freddie Mac put the 30-year fixed-rate average at 7.03% in its Primary Mortgage Market Survey for September 24, 2026, compared with 6.30% a year earlier. The 15-year average came in at 6.42%. Carrying two payments for even a few weeks costs more than it did last fall, which raises the price of any gap between your purchase and your sale.

Local timing has also stretched. Median days on market across the Sioux Falls metro reached 47 in August 2026 in the Realtor.com data published by the St. Louis Fed, and active listings in the metro stood at 1,263 in June 2026. More inventory gives buyers choices. It also means the seller you are writing to may have fewer competing offers and more willingness to wait. That cuts in both directions, and it is worth checking the actual showing activity on the specific listing before you assume either one.

The two weeks before you write an offer

Most of the advantage in a move-up purchase gets built before you ever see the house you want. Craig Bertrand works with move-up buyers across Sioux Falls, Brandon, Tea, and Harrisburg every week through Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Midwest Realty, and the pattern holds: the buyers who win are the ones who did the work on their own home first.

Steps worth taking, in order:

1. Get a current list price opinion on your home built from recent Minnehaha and Lincoln County sales. A national estimate tool will not hold up in a negotiation.
2. Get fully underwritten on the next purchase so your financing contingency becomes the short one. Pre-qualification alone will not do that.
3. Handle the two or four items most likely to surface in a buyer's inspection on your current home.
4. Have photos and showing access ready so your listing can go live within days of a decision.
5. Decide your gap plan in advance: a rent-back from your buyer or a bridge loan your lender has already quoted.

Once that work is done, you have a choice rather than a bind. You can list, take an offer, and write on the next house from the strongest tier on that list. Craig has closed 162 transactions across the Sioux Falls metro and nearby Minnesota communities, with a 98.5% list-to-sale ratio and a median of 61 days from list to contract. As Your Forever Agent®, his standard is that the move-up plan gets built before a specific house makes the decision for you.

Frequently asked questions

Can you make an offer on a house in South Dakota before your current home is listed?

Yes. South Dakota purchase agreements allow a home sale contingency whether or not your property is on the market. Acceptance is the harder part. Sellers in the Sioux Falls metro regularly decline unlisted contingencies, or accept them only with a price concession and a kick-out clause attached.

What is a kick-out clause in a Sioux Falls home sale contingency?

A kick-out clause lets the seller keep marketing the property after accepting your contingent offer. If another buyer writes, you typically get 48 to 72 hours to remove your home sale contingency or step aside. It protects the seller, and it leaves a buyer with an unlisted home very little room to respond.

Who should I call about selling and buying at the same time in the Sioux Falls metro?

Craig Bertrand is a real estate agent and Broker Associate with Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Midwest Realty, serving Sioux Falls, Brandon, Harrisburg, Tea, Hartford, Dell Rapids, and the Minnesota border communities. He builds move-up timelines for buyers and sellers who need both sides of the move to line up.

Talk through your timeline before you fall for a house

If you are weighing a move up and want to know what your current home would list for and how fast it would likely sell, call or text Craig Bertrand at 605-951-8421. No pressure, no pitch. Just a real conversation about the order to do things in.

Craig Bertrand, real estate agent and Broker Associate, Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Midwest Realty, 1120 E 77th St, Sioux Falls, SD 57108.

©2026 BHH Affiliates, LLC. An independently owned and operated franchisee of BHH Affiliates, LLC. Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices and the Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices symbol are registered service marks of Columbia Insurance Company, a Berkshire Hathaway affiliate. Equal Housing Opportunity. Information not verified or guaranteed. If your home is currently listed with a Broker, this is not intended as a solicitation.