A new home is one of the most common New Year’s resolutions people make, and one of the easiest to let slide. January 1 feels like the starting line. For a buyer who wants to be moved in by summer, it’s closer to the halfway mark.
The people who close on a house in Germantown or Collierville next spring mostly didn’t start in January. They pulled their credit in November, sorted out the down payment over the holidays, and had a pre-approval letter in hand before the first big wave of spring listings. When the right house came up in March, they could write an offer that afternoon.
So if “new year, new home” is on your list for 2027, this is a month-by-month plan for getting there, starting now. It’s written mainly for buyers, including owners who’ll be selling one house and buying the next. If you’re only selling, our spring 2027 seller’s timeline covers that side in detail.
Know which kind of move you’re making
Before the calendar, figure out which of these describes you, because the plan changes.
If you’re renting and buying your first home, your whole timeline runs on savings, credit, and pre-approval. You can move whenever the right house and your lease line up. Our guide for buying your first home in Memphis walks through the full process, including Tennessee’s THDA programs, and our checklist for deciding whether you’re ready to buy is the honest gut check before any of it.
If you already own, you’re running two transactions. Your equity is probably your down payment, so the sale and the purchase have to be planned together, and the order you do them in decides how much stress you’ll have in April. We’ll come back to that.
And if you’re relocating for a job that starts on a fixed date, work backward from that date first. The steps are the same. You just have less slack between them.
Before Thanksgiving, look at the money first
It’s tempting to start with Zillow. Start with your own numbers instead. Houses are more fun to look at, but the money decides which houses you can buy.
Pull your credit reports from all three bureaus at AnnualCreditReport.com. They’re free every week now, and checking your own report doesn’t touch your score. You’re looking for errors: a paid-off account still showing a balance, a collection you don’t recognize, a late payment that wasn’t late. Disputes can take a month or more to clear, which is exactly why November is the time to find them.
Next, add up what you have for cash. A purchase needs more than the down payment. You’ll also pay closing costs, usually a few percent of the price, and you’ll want a cushion left in the bank after closing. Lenders like to see reserves, and so will you the first time the HVAC quits. If the down payment is the part that feels out of reach, read the truth about down payments before you assume you need 20%. First-time buyers usually put down a lot less. In the National Association of Realtors’ 2026 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers, released in November, the median first-time buyer put down 9%. Even repeat buyers, many of them rolling over equity from a sale, came in at a median of 19%.
Then decide on a monthly payment you’re comfortable with, separate from what any lender will approve. Include principal and interest, homeowners insurance, and property taxes. In Germantown and Collierville you pay city property tax on top of Shelby County’s, which surprises buyers coming from unincorporated areas or out of state. Our breakdown of property taxes in Germantown and Shelby County shows how to estimate it for a specific house.
Keep the holidays from wrecking your credit
December is the month that undoes a lot of good planning, and it’s usually a shopping decision that does it.
Store credit cards with a holiday discount, zero-percent financing on a new couch for the house you haven’t bought yet, a new car lease because the year-end deals are good. Each one can add a hard inquiry, a new account, and a monthly payment that raises your debt-to-income ratio right before a lender looks at it. Wait until after closing for all of it. The couch will still be there.
Holiday cash needs a little care too. If your parents plan to help with the down payment and they’re thinking of writing the check at Christmas, talk to your lender first. Lenders generally want a gift letter and a paper trail for large deposits, and money that shows up in your account with no explanation can slow down an approval. Ask first and it’s an easy problem. Ask after the deposit and it’s a slower one.
Use the slow weeks between the holidays to gather paperwork. A lender will typically ask for:
- Your last two years of W-2s and federal tax returns
- Recent pay stubs, usually covering the last 30 days
- Two months of statements for every bank and investment account
- Documentation for any income beyond a salary, such as self-employment, bonuses, or child support
Put it all in one folder now. When the lender asks in January, you’ll send it in an afternoon.
Choose a lender and get pre-approved
Pre-approval belongs in December or early January, before you start touring. Talk to two or three lenders, compare their loan estimates line by line, and ask each one how long their pre-approval is good for. Many letters run 60 to 90 days, so if you’re targeting March, get the first one in January and plan to refresh it. We cover what the letter does and why sellers care in why you should get pre-approved before you start the house hunt.
Comparing lenders won’t hurt your score much. Credit scoring models generally count several mortgage inquiries made within a short shopping window as one, so do your rate shopping in a few weeks instead of spreading it across the winter.
Loan limits are worth a question too, especially at Germantown and Collierville prices. For 2026, the FHA limit for a single-family home in Shelby County is $541,287, and the baseline limit for conventional loans that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac buy is $832,750. A loan above that conventional limit is a jumbo loan, which usually comes with stricter requirements. The 2027 limits are typically announced in late November, and they usually go up. Ask your lender where your price range falls once the new numbers are out.
For owners, the sale is half the plan
If you own your current home, the most important number in your 2027 move is probably your equity. Get a real estimate of it early. Our post on how much equity you have in your home shows how to figure it, and a local agent can give you a more exact number based on what’s selling near you.
The bigger decision is order. You can sell first and rent or do a rent-back for a few months, or buy first and carry two houses for a while, or try to close both on the same day. Each has a cost. Selling first gives you a stronger offer and a known budget. Buying first lets you move once but leans hard on your cash or a bridge loan. We laid out the trade-offs in whether to sell before buying or buy first.
We’d push most move-up buyers in Germantown and Collierville toward getting the current house ready to list before shopping in earnest. In a busy spring, an offer contingent on selling your home loses to an offer that isn’t. Having your house prepped, priced, and ready to go on the market within days takes most of the sting out of that contingency. The seller timeline we mentioned at the top covers the prep work, from the fall inspection to February photos.
What January is good for
Most buyers take January off. That’s one reason it’s a good month to shop.
The listings on the market right after the holidays usually belong to sellers who need to move: a job transfer, an estate, a house that didn’t sell in the fall. With fewer buyers out, you’ll often have room to ask for closing cost help or repairs that you wouldn’t get in April. Selection is thin, so you may not find the house in January, but it’s a low-pressure time to tour, learn what your budget buys in each neighborhood, and maybe find the right one early. We went through the pros and cons of each season in the best time of year to buy a home in Memphis.
A practical note: employers have to send W-2s by January 31. When yours arrives, send it to your lender so your file stays current.
February and March, narrow it down to streets
By late winter you should know your budget, your loan type, and roughly what it buys. Now get specific.
In Germantown and Collierville, the school zone often drives the search. Classes there start in early August, so families want to close by June or July, and that’s why competition picks up from late February on. Pick the zones and neighborhoods that matter to you and set up saved searches on the Germantown and Collierville listing pages so new homes show up the day they list.
Then drive the commute. If you’ll work downtown or in the medical district, time the trip down Poplar at 7:45 on a Tuesday, not the version Google estimates at midnight. If your job is out by the airport or in Southaven, try Bill Morris Parkway at rush hour. Two houses that look identical on paper can be twenty minutes apart every morning, and you’ll feel that long after the paint color stops mattering.
When the right house comes up in March, expect to move quickly and possibly compete. Buyers who did the winter work write a clean offer the same afternoon. Buyers who didn’t are still emailing pay stubs to a lender.
If the timeline slips
Some plans don’t hold. A job change gets pushed, a credit dispute takes longer, the right house doesn’t come up. That’s fine. Nothing in this plan expires on the first of April. The work you did on your credit and savings stays done. Summer brings price cuts on homes that sat through the spring rush, and fall usually brings a calmer market with sellers who’d like to be done before the holidays.
The resolution starts in November
A lot of resolutions stall because January 1 is the first day anyone thinks about them. A home purchase is worse that way, since the slow parts (credit disputes, savings, a lender’s paperwork) can’t be rushed once you’ve found the house. If you want to be in a new place by next summer, the honest start date is a few weeks before Thanksgiving. Call it an early resolution.
If you want a hand building your plan, get in touch with us. We’ll talk through which kind of move you’re making, set up searches in the neighborhoods you’re considering, and help you work out when to list your current house if you have one to sell.
