You can usually keep your current home as a rental and buy the next one as your primary residence; the rules differ by loan type, and only FHA has a distance test. FHA's is the 100-mile rule. To count rental income from the home you are leaving, FHA requires that you be relocating more than 100 miles away. And if you have no history as a landlord, FHA also wants a market-rent appraisal on the departing home plus documentation that you have at least 25% equity in it. A cross-country move clears the distance easily. When the rule works in your favor, you could use FHA again or go conventional with 5% down. The 3%-down conventional option is usually off the table here, because it requires either a first-time buyer on the loan or fitting within HomeReady or Home Possible income limits, and a relocation raise often pushes you over those limits. Conventional financing has no mileage requirement. Fannie Mae allows rental income from a departing residence with a documented lease, and the agency guideline has no landlord-history mandate; if a lender asks for one, that is the lender's own overlay, and another lender may not. Either way, the move has to make logical sense on paper. Leaving a large house for a small condo a few miles away with no stated reason will draw questions. Program details change, so treat the specifics as a starting point and confirm the current FHA and conventional requirements for your scenario. The cleanest way to see which path fits your income and the numbers is the free Roadmap conversation, about 20 minutes where we run your real numbers.