The real estate market has always been the sort of place you want to navigate at your own risk. But at almost no time has it been less difficult to navigate than it is now. However, just because the real estate market isn't a safe place to play these days doesn't mean that you will never need to get a new home. Things happen in your life. You meet Mr. or Ms. Wonderful on an internet dating site and move across the country to be with them. Or you get a new job and have to relocate to another city. Life goes on, difficult economy or no.
Fortunately for people having a difficult time selling their old home in order to buy a new once, there's a new resource out there, and some homeowners are doing both their buying and their selling in one fell swoop.
In the last several years, house swapping groups and websites have been popping up all over the world. While you've probably heard of trading homes for a week or two for a vacation, most people don't know that groups exist which allow for a permanent trade instead of a temporary one. And that more and more people are using these services.
How House Swapping Works
The way house swapping works varies greatly from person to person. Essentially, these websites help you create an "I buy your house and you buy mine" agreement. Some people who swap houses simply do a direct trade. Other times, when the asking prices of the two homes are different, they simply do a mortgage, just as they would if they were making a purchase from any other home seller. But because there's no real estate broker or other middleman involved, they save a lot of money. And have very little problem selling their old home, because that sale is built right into the purchase. It's just about as simple as you can make it.
With the sheer number of houses sitting on the market right now, this idea actually makes a lot of sense. When there were fewer homes up for sale, buyers had to work hard to find something in the area they were looking for. But when the market is as full as it is now, there are bound to be homes for sale anyplace you look. Home swapping websites simply hook you up with the owners of those homes... some of which may want to live in the kind of home you own now.
What Kind of House You Need
When it comes to getting a new home this way, the kind of home you can trade will vary. Some buyers are looking for something very specific, which means it will take a long time before they find a home they can effectively trade. Others are simply looking for a new home in the same city they currently live in, or don't care where they move. For these sorts of buyers, the sky's the limit.
When you sign up for a home swapping service, you'll have to answer a whole host of questions about your current home, and will need to treat the sale of your old home just as you would in any other case. In order to trade, the two homes involved will generally need to be the same kind of property, have the specified number of bedrooms and bathrooms (which will be stated on another buyer's "wanted" ad), be found in a certain location, and be priced within the range that the buyer is looking for.
In essence, you can both search for people looking for homes like yours, and search for people selling homes like the one you want. When you look in both directions, it's that much easier to find the house of your dreams. Or at least the house that has more or less what you need.
Buying and Paying
After making an agreement with the other seller, the buying and selling process works exactly as it would with a traditional sale. You agree upon an amount, work with a mortgage company, get all the inspections done, and go through the same process that you would buying a house from anybody else. But when the sale of your own home is assured, you don't have to worry about juggling two mortgage payments... or paying an arm and a leg to the middle man.
