07.05.08
Real estate swap sites, alternative to selling?
One year. That’s how long I have been trying to sell some land. I’m not alone, I heard just the other day that a family was contemplating moving back into their house that they had been trying to sell for six months.
Recently I put my land on domuswap, a real estate swap site. Here is how it works. You list your property and set up some criteria on what you will consider in trade. The site attempts to match your property with possible trade candidates. You can search for properties and inquire about possible matches. In the few weeks I have had the land listed I have gotten several inquiries, one interesting and a real candidate.
The one challenging thing is if the properties are financed. The lender won’t let you just move a loan over to a new property, you have to get a new one. All the rules apply as if it was a regular transaction, even if you decide to trade into a property that is worth less than your current property, the bank will want an appraisal and lend based on that, not based on what you are trading out of.
Other swap sites are goswap and onlinehousetrading. I haven’t checked these sites out yet.
Jim Grapes said,
July 6, 2008 at 12:58 am
Interesting, I’m going to have to check this out. Do they match investors and 1031 property exchanges too?
kathyalice said,
July 6, 2008 at 6:34 pm
I don’t believe that is specific swap criteria (ie. 1031) you can set up. However there is a comments field where you could say exactly what you are looking for. Also I haven’t checked out the other two sites either so the answer might be different there.
Warren said,
July 7, 2008 at 5:43 am
Estate market price keep dropping since the explode of subprime crisis.
Don’t think the effect has gone, big impact is yet to come.
Better get ready for recession. Prevention is better than cure.
George said,
September 13, 2008 at 1:08 pm
As far I as I know, http://www.goswap.org is the only one that actually matches assets and location. The search form is right on their homepage. I just posted there, only had one response so far.
Simon Padgett said,
September 20, 2009 at 11:37 pm
This is a great idea and is something I have discussed with a few clients here in the Turks and Caicos Islands