Five steps. One orchestrated move. Zero mid-year school switches since 2021.

Equity Mapping

Know what you have before you shop.

Before we look at a single listing, we establish three numbers with precision:

• Today's net sale value — not a Zestimate, a real comp-backed range with high/mid/low cases, discounted for the season you're actually selling in.
• True available equity after sale — sale price minus mortgage payout, commission, legal, staging, and the three things the pre-listing inspector will catch. This is the number that actually lands in your downpayment account.
• Real next-home ceiling — PTT, closing costs, and the overlap month's double-carry included. Not the bank's pre-approval number. The family's actual sleep-at-night number.

What most families think it costs: thirty minutes with a calculator. What it actually costs: two meetings, a mortgage-broker coordination call, a full comp pull on the last 90 days of sold data in your neighbourhood, about six hours of my time.

What they get: a single sheet with three numbers. Those three numbers govern every decision from here. They settle the most common family argument in a move-up — "Can we afford the $2M house or do we have to settle for $1.7M?" — because the sheet answers it definitively.

Catchment Lock

Pick the school first, then the streets.

Most move-up families shop the house first and hope the school works. That's backwards and it produces either a reluctant private-school tuition bill or a painful mid-year school switch. We flip the order.

Before any house hunting starts, we nail the SD43 elementary catchment you're committed to, the secondary school that feeds it, and your family's non-negotiables on cross-boundary — Lougheed, Coquitlam-proper vs. Burke Mountain vs. Westwood Plateau, whether Anmore is open if the price right-sizes.

Why this matters more in Coquitlam than anywhere else: SD43 catchment lines are among the most consequential in Metro Vancouver for resale value. A detached home in one catchment sells for 8-14% less than an identical home three blocks over in a different one. Move-up families who don't know this buy the cheaper block, then fight with the resale buyer five years later who does know.

Parallel Motion

List and shop simultaneously, not in series.

Here's where I diverge from the one-transaction agent by the widest margin. Most agents say: "List first. Once it's under contract, we'll start looking." That's the two-deal pattern. It creates every problem downstream.

• List preparation and buyer search start the same week. Staging call, pre-listing inspection, photography — in parallel with the first showings on the buy side.
• The listing goes live the same week you've seen 4-6 target properties. Both sides active. Offers on the sell side come in while we're actively negotiating on the buy side.
• Subject-to-sale offers become strategic, not desperate. A subject-to-sale offer from a seller with a listed home already attracting showings reads entirely different to the other side than one from a family who hasn't photographed yet.
• Target simultaneous-close window: 7-14 days. Most one-transaction agents call a 30-day gap "coordinated." I aim for 7-14. It's harder. That's the point.

The counterintuitive outcome: parallel-motion families negotiate from a stronger position on both sides. Never desperate on either. A family who has already sold but hasn't bought is a desperate buyer. A family who has bought but hasn't sold is a desperate seller. Parallel Motion is neither.

Bridge Strategy

Plan the 30-90 day overlap before it becomes a crisis.

Even with Parallel Motion, sometimes the windows don't perfectly line up. A great buy surfaces two weeks before the sell closes. A sell closes three weeks before the buy is ready. This is the most predictable failure point in a move-up, and the one-transaction agent treats it as "the mortgage broker's problem."

It's not. It's an orchestration problem, and we plan for it in Step 1.

• Pre-approved bridge financing through one of two local brokers, established in Step 1 — paperwork in draft, not scrambling when we need it.
• A known short-term-rental plan — a specific serviced rental pre-identified in the target catchment, if there's a gap. We do not "figure it out when the time comes."
• Pre-agreed rent-back terms on either transaction. A rent-back on the sale (you stay in the old place for 30 days post-close) is usually cheaper and less disruptive than a bridge loan.
• A furniture-and-storage contingency. Pod-style storage pre-contracted if the gap is 3+ weeks. We're not calling U-Haul at 9pm the night before.

Why families cry at the bridge stage in a one-transaction deal: they find out in week 2 of the gap that their bridge loan was declined, their rent-back extension was denied, and their stuff is in a storage facility they chose in panic. Every piece of that was preventable 60 days earlier.

Soft Landing

Move-day logistics so nobody sleeps on a couch.

The one-transaction agent's involvement ends at funding. Mine continues through move day plus thirty days.

• The move-day sequence — movers booked 60 days in advance, arrival windows coordinated with both closings, key handover timing, utility switchover dates.
• School transition timing — if a mid-year change was unavoidable, a warm handoff to the new school's admin before the first day, uniform list in hand, a scheduled call with the new principal if the kid is anxious. This is not a realtor job in the traditional sense. I do it anyway.
• The 30-day post-close touchpoint — I show up in week 4 with a punch list: what's working in the new place, what isn't, which contractors I'd call for the three things the inspector flagged. This is the difference between "transaction complete" and "family moved."
• The neighbourhood handoff — introductions to two or three neighbours, the right coffee spot, the trailhead closest to the new house, the off-leash park if there's a dog.

Why this matters beyond the deal: nine of my last ten referrals came from Soft Landing, not from the transaction itself. People forget what you sold them for. They don't forget that you showed up at week four with a list of the three best painters in their new neighbourhood.