Residential mortgage help?

[Neil Goodman]

My wife and I are looking to sell our single family home and downsize to a house with less sq ft., to be closer to where we work.

In order to sell, I believe that we will need to take out a home equity loan (or line of credit?) in order to make our house more marketable and to get some things up to code.

Once we sell, we will need to secure a 30-year, fixed mortgage for a new house.

• Currently, we have more credit card debt than we would like and that has negatively impacted our credit rating.
• Our goal is to improve our credit scores by using the revenue from selling our current house to:
  • pay off all of our credit card debt
  • pay off the home equity loan
  • make a downpayment on a new house

My question is, what is the best way to accomplish these goals and ensure that we are set up to succeed?

My fear is that we will sell our house, and then not be able to qualify for the mortgage loan for our next house. There is also the chance that we would not qualify for the home equity loan either.

Any feedback and advice would be greatly appreciated.