House Swap rather than Buy & Sell??

LuckyPhil

Has anyone got any knowledge of House Swapping or Home Swapping rather than Buying and Selling? It seems a good idea and would avoid the dreaded Chain. I read an article about it on a site called LoveMoney but the only Link I could find was to 'Easyhouseexchange.com' and it I can't find any up to date info on the site OR any mention of how much they charge. It says 'Free to register' but that doesn't tell you about what it costs to exchange homes via their site - unless they set the site up out of the goodness of their hearts ;-)

hazyjo

The chances of finding someone who is looking for what you're selling and vice versa are slim to none.


Occasionally it happens, but it's more through coincidence (perhaps a seller gets an offer and is looking to downsize so buys their buyer's property; or perhaps the vendors may buy the property to complete the chain, etc).


Personally, I'd not bother. If you do, read that smallprint thoroughly!

PasturesNew

It seems a good idea, until you wonder who has a vested interest in developing such a thing + the complexity of the match/search.

I know somebody who, 40 years ago, was looking for a house to buy - they found one and the seller took their house in part-exchange because he had bought a pub/similar and was moving into that, so had thought about using his leftover money to buy a little rental.

A bizarre and unusual set of circumstances.

It would be outside of normal house hunters' needs. To find two people who like each others' houses enough to swap/live in would be very rare... so one party would need to be in a flexible and unusual situation.

As for developing/running the idea, it'd be so niche it'd not have enough footfall and actual swaps to make it economically viable.

eddddy

As others say, the chances of finding people who wants to swap houses seem minuscule.

Or do you feel that there is something very specific about your property (or your circumstances) and the property that you are looking for, that makes a swap seem more likely?

FWIW, looking at https://www.easyhouseexchange.com/

The latest press articles are from 2009
http://www.easyhouseexchange.com/press.htm

And their FAQ page mentions a '2010 New Year special'
http://www.easyhouseexchange.com/faq.aspx

So it sounds like the website may have fallen into disuse.

davidmcn

eddddy wrote: »

As others say, the chances of finding people who wants to swap houses seem minuscule.

Or do you feel that there is something very specific about your property (or your circumstances) and the property that you are looking for, that makes a swap seem more likely?

FWIW, looking at https://www.easyhouseexchange.com/

The latest press articles are from 2009
http://www.easyhouseexchange.com/press.htm

And their FAQ page mentions a '2010 New Year special'
http://www.easyhouseexchange.com/faq.aspx

So it sounds like the website may have fallen into disuse.

Possibly - though the limited company is being kept ticking over. Nothing happening in the accounts though so it looks virtually dormant.

LuckyPhil

I agree eddddy. I saw a link to easy house exchange in a Sept 2019 article on lovemoney but i havent bothered registering as the site seems out of date. I rang the number on the 'contact us' section and got a woman in Ireland who works in an IT WebDesign company but she knew nowt about the site in question. So I shall forget about it. Thanks for your input.