Sell in Lake Elmo, build the next one.
Heritage Homes builds the new home. Royal Home Team lists and sells the existing one. Same team across both ends in Lake Elmo.
Larger acreage, longer listing windows, more specific buyers.
Lake Elmo is what Woodbury was thirty years ago, except people figured it out. The lots are bigger, the trees are older, and the drive in from town is just long enough that you feel the day shift.
On the listing side, that means a smaller, more specific buyer pool. Acreage homes don't sell to the same families looking for an infill subdivision. Listings can take longer to land the right offer, but the offers that do land tend to be solid: buyers who know what they're looking at.
Septic and well inspection logistics affect closing timelines. Lori coordinates the inspections in parallel with the listing window rather than after the offer, which keeps closings on schedule.
Two transactions on the same calendar.
Most families need the equity from their current home to fund the next one. The hard part is rarely the price either side will land at. It's the sequencing. Sell too early and you're renting. Sell too late and you've carried a build longer than you wanted to.
Doing this alone usually means three different teams: a builder for the new home, a real-estate agent for the sale, a lender bridging the gap. Three calendars, three sets of priorities, and the spaces between them are where deals slow down.
The choice in front of most sell-then-build clients isn't whether the move is hard. It's whether it's coordinated.
Heritage Homes and Royal Home Team, the same hands.
Heritage builds the new home. Royal Home Team lists and sells the existing one. Lori Howard runs both, with twenty-eight years in residential real estate and new construction behind her.
Same conversation, same timeline, same person at the center of both ends. The build clock and the sale clock get coordinated from the first call rather than after the design is locked.
The integration is the value. Heritage doesn't claim to do the real estate transaction. Royal Home Team handles that side end to end, and the build side answers to the same calendar.
Three honest scenarios. We tell you which one fits before you choose.
- 01
Sell first, then build
Maximum equity certainty. Requires interim housing.
Lori lists the existing home before the build breaks ground. The proceeds become the down payment on the construction loan, and there's no carrying cost on the old home during the build. The trade-off is a stretch of interim housing while the new one rises. For families with flexibility on where to land for ten months, this is usually the cleanest path.
- 02
Parallel paths
Sale and build run together. Requires coordination and contingent offers.
The build starts before the sale closes. The existing home goes on the market timed to the construction schedule, often with a contingent offer that lets the buyer wait on the new home's completion date. This works when the local market is moving and when both sides accept the contingency. Most coordination conversations happen here.
- 03
Bridge financing
Build first, sell later. Requires bridge loan or HELOC.
The new home gets financed without waiting for the existing home to sell. A bridge loan or a HELOC against the existing home covers the gap, and the sale happens after move-in. Higher carrying cost during the overlap, but no pressure to time anything. The right path when the existing home is hard to vacate or when a slower sale gets a better price.
- 04
Lake Elmo well-and-septic timing
Inspections gate the closing. Run them in parallel with the listing.
Lake Elmo homes on private well and septic require both inspections to close cleanly. Buyer-financed deals usually have a contingency on the results. We schedule both inspections during the active listing rather than after the offer, so the contingency clears in days rather than weeks.
Bridge loans, contingent offers, and a build loan that converts at handoff.
The dual-transaction sequence has more moving parts than a standard build. Bridge loans, contingent offers, equity from the sale applied to the construction down payment, and the construction-to-permanent loan that converts the build into a mortgage at handoff. Most lenders see one of these monthly. The ones we work with see all of them every week.
We coordinate the timing. Lori prices the listing against where the buyer market sits and against where the build calendar lands. The lender lines up the bridge or the contingent offer to match. The sale closes when it should, not when it has to.
The first call sketches the path. We tell you honestly which of the three scenarios fits your situation, and we connect you with lenders who specialize in the dual transaction. No commitment until you've seen the math.
The first Heritage build, week by week.
Five wooded acres in Afton, a single-level home, slab-on-grade with a safe room. Real proof there's an actual home being built.
Foundation walls, cured.
May 7. The walls cured this week. The home is shaped for single-level living, with a safe room built in instead of a basement. Walking the perimeter, the rooms have an outline you can step into. The slab comes next.
Tell us about the move.
The first call is a conversation, not a quote. We map the timing before either side starts. Or call (651) 383-1710.