House exchange instead of sale? Advice please

Christabel

I have been trying to sell my house for 15 months now, without success. Obviously in that time it has gone down in value. I have a mortgage that I can take with me when I move so am thinking of trying to exchange my house instead. I need to move to a town about an hour away from where I live now.

Has anyone else done this and can you tell me names of websites you can use? A google search only seems to throw up council house exchanges.

QTPie

Hi

I haven't done anything similar, but why don't you try contacting estate agents in the area you want to move to and explain your situation...? Say that you are looking for a property in their area and would be particularly interested in doing a part-exchange. The EAs in that area might be able to suggest clients that they have who MIGHT be interested in that sort of arrangement (they may want to either move to your area OR - if your's is a lesser value than there's - might consider yours as an investment property).

I don't know how easy it would be, I could see it being possible to do "within an area" (i.e. part exchanging when you are up-sizing), but it might be quite a lot harder to do it from a different area: you might have to be VERY lucky to achieve a part-exchange with a private seller who wants what you have to exchange.

Of course part-exchanging for new builds is generally easier (espeically in this climate): are there any new builds, in the area that you want to move to, that you could be interested in?

QT

Doozergirl

It isn't really an exchange, it's still purchasing.

You might want to try googling house swap, there is a website out there somewhere but not even having seen it mentioned here, I'm not convinced of it's popularity.

It's very hard to find the right person to exchange with if you have specific ideas in mind. You're trying to find someone with a property in a certain price band in a specific location that might be willing to take your house. One of you needs to be flexible for you to have a hope of that happening - the odds of two people being able to swap houses, both being exactly what they are looking for is quite small.

We took a house in part exchange but I wasn't particularly concerned where it was as long as the price was right. That obviously made it a lot easier.

Christabel

Thanks both. Contacting EAs in my preferred area is a good idea, I will try that. I need to trade down and newbuilds only want your house if its of a lesser value than the one you are buying.

ktee_uk

Hi
We did an exchange last year. We traded up, they traded down. I wasnt looking specifically for an exchange, just found the property we liked, chatted to the vendors to find out their selling position and realised we could help each other out. Had to do some persuading initially as its not a common thing to do but once we got the other people to come and look at our property it was plain sailing as they liked ours as much as we liked theirs. We negotiated a price for the price difference, used the same solicitor and removals (got great discounts on that too).
Can thoroughly recommend it but you need to be careful not to get too pally and stay focused on completing the deal.

regards

pawpurrs

I regiested with homeswapper4sale, but you have to pay to stay on their books, and to be honest, I think its pretty difficult to match up two people that want each others houses, so I wont be paying, its free for 7 days, not sure how much it is after that. I am sure there are other sites, perhaps have a google?

rumbaba

Homeswapper4sale is totally USELESS!

They just want your joining fee. I doubt they've ever introduced two people who have swapped properties.

The joke is with it that people are offering to swap their horrible 2-bed ex-council flats in a dingy area for a nice 3-bed private flat, or 2 bed-house in a good area that's worth £100k more than theirs!!!!

The more grounded people have specific wants. They want a certain area/type flat/house, number of beds etc.........and the chances of you wanting theirs is about zilch.

Don't waste your money on signing up - you'd have better luck advertising yourself on ebay. gumtree or in the local newspaper of the area you'd like to move to. You could even put cards in shops of the area you want to move to - you'll be surprised how successful they are!