The last decade has shown that housing markets are characterized by phases of high and phases of low liquidity. In phases of high liquidity, households that sold their house before buying a new one, can be stuck in temporary housing for a long time. In phases of low liquidity, households that bought a new house before selling their old one, suffer from enduring double housing expenses. By choosing the order of buying and selling households can avoid one of these problems. However, by doing so, they affect the tightness and the composition of buyer and seller types in the market. Because of their different outside options, different types pay different prices. This paper shows that the order of buying and selling can result in multiple equilibria. Because equilibria differ in their transaction probabilities, these can explain self-fulfilling phases of high and low liquidity in the housing market. Remarkably, an equilibrium in which households first buy can be superior to an equilibrium in which households search as buyer and seller at the same time, because even though every mover owns two houses for some time, in steady state the fraction of people paying double housing expenses can be lower due to a larger outflow.