Whether selling in Hampton Roads or another country, your living needs/desires are an important factor to consider. Often owner occupants looking to sell are upsizing, downsizing, or moving.

If you're about to be stationed in Hampton Roads coming from Germany where you're selling a home, it's important for most that you get either a rental or a purchase soon.

Making the choice between a rental or purchase for your next home is an important decision prior to selling. https://www.adambgarrett.com/rent-or-buy
https://www.adambgarrett.com/renting
How to purchase & buy around the same time: https://bit.ly/3ix7glb

If you sell & do a rental first, then expect to leave the area for somewhere else in 4 years, you'll likely be losing out some financially if the market continues to appreciate in the next year like it's been appreciating in Hampton Roads. In today's Hampton Roads market of high appreciation (2021) it typically will increase substantially. To see 1 year projections of appreciation by US zipcode, go here in Zillow & input your zipcode:
https://www.zillow.com/home-values/
If in a rural area and no projection is available for your zipcode, check for more densely populated nearby zipcodes to get a projection & compare the value history of that zipcode to the one you want to know about.

It could be a lot less costly to do an extended stay with temporary housing for a month or 2 here than to rent for a year. https://www.adambgarrett.com/temporary-housing Some buyers opt to purchase before ever coming to the area, and I have plenty of digital options for that as well as a great camera phone for live video.

Some prospective buyers need a unique home that might not be available for rent because the inventory for rent is much lower than for purchase in and around Hampton Roads & because landlords won't allow certain things often. For instance, in the past 24 hrs at the time of this writing I spoke to someone where one of the reasons they wanted to buy was because they had 3 dogs and a cat, were getting work in a rural area, and knew that their options for rent would be limited.

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Lease terms is another factor to consider. If you are renting a property and don't have lease terms up front within your lease regarding breaking your lease, you could be in a tough position if looking to break your lease before a purchase. While in some cases, it would be worth it to break your lease, in other cases, such as if the market is expected to go down between now and then due to seasonal fluctuation & the interest rates were expected to go down in the meantime as well, it could be better to ride out the lease.

Sometimes those who have lived in a home did so with a mindset of flipping. By purchasing as an owner occupant, they were able to get a better interest rate than they could have otherwise and in some cases, as in my own for my first home, they purchased a property that was prohibited from standard investor purchases by owner occupant restrictions on the purchase (i.e. Fannie Mae Homepath properties and HUD properties that often have a period where investors can't purchase the home while owner occupants can). In other cases, those who purchased the home had a mindset of investing, but more along the lines of buying and holding. For that you'll find more details in my next section on keeping the home.