By Gillian Bullock

In a falling property market should you buy first or sell first? The logic would say that selling first is the way to go as you get the higher price and then buy at a lower price. But unless you synchronise these transactions or organise an extended settlement period you could find yourself renting.

This brings with it its own set of problems including the need to move twice, organise two lots of utilities and in many cases live in a place that is of a lower standard than your home.

But those who believe you should sell first say such a strategy means you know how much money you have to play with when it comes to buying your new property.

Neverthelss it can be tricky and it begs the question of whether you should you buy first and worry about the selling later. The key issue here is that it is not such a clever strategy in a falling market. Such a scenario would mean that you would have paid more for your new place when prices were higher but then you would get less for your old one when you sold it at a later date.

And if it's a flat property market you may have difficulty offloading your original home. As a result you could well see yourself having to finance two properties at the one time.

The traditional way to deal with this situation is through bridging finance which these days tends to carry the standard variable interest rate. Usually a bridging loan is up to six months although lenders these days appear to offer many more options such as borrowing against your existing home.

There are two potential problems with bridging finance. Firstly, your ability to service two loans and secondly your actually being able to borrow a large sum in the current credit crunch with the tightening of the criteria for borrowing.

But what if you were to hold on to the two properties until the market recovered, renting one of them out to help meet your repayments?

After all, you may have two mortgages but you also have two properties! And with a rental crisis in many areas, it might not be such a foolish option.