Anwar (A.B.) Barnes and Cecily Lewis Barnes were proud to own a townhouse in pricey Los Angeles. The high school sweethearts, who have been married for 17 years, were raising their two children (now ages 6 and 14) there, but as the family grew, they realized the townhouse wasn’t big enough to handle their changing lives. “We went to an open house at a single-family home for sale in our neighborhood for $750,000,” said Mr. Barnes, 47, a video editor with Hulu. “That house needed too much work, but that started the wheels turning to think about whether we could sell our townhouse to get something else.”

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It wouldn’t be easy. First they would have to sell the townhouse, in the North Hills section of the San Fernando Valley, and pay off their mortgage. At the same time, they would need to find a house that they could afford, and then line up the two closings just right.

With help from Melitta Johnson, a real estate agent with Compass and a friend of Mrs. Barnes, the couple were confident they could get about $550,000 for the townhouse, leaving them with a profit of around $150,000 after they paid off their mortgage. But would it be enough? Last October, as their hunt began, the median sale price for a single-family home in the San Fernando Valley was $903,500, according to Redfin.

“We really wanted to stay in the Valley near our kids’ schools and our friends,” said Mrs. Barnes, 45, an actress and executive assistant at Hulu. “Our priorities were for more indoor and outdoor space. And I really wanted a pool, too.”

Mrs. Johnson advised them that the local market had begun to slow in the fall as the holidays approached and mortgage rates remained high. “There weren’t as many bidding wars,” she said, “but most homes had more than one offer and the seller would just accept the highest one.”

The Barneses quickly learned that homes at their initial budget of $750,000 typically needed a lot of work. But they hoped not to spend too much more, so they expanded their search farther afield, including areas more susceptible to wildfires.

“A.B. would sometimes bid on homes that weren’t livable without $100,000 of work,” Mrs. Barnes said. “I was relieved when he was outbid because I didn’t want to spend that much just to be able to move in.”

Eventually, they found a few options they could agree to consider.

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