When Andrew Bou’s employer said, “Move to Atlanta,” the Orlando-area resident did not want his home to sit on the market for two years. So he took a cue from singles looking for love and tried online matchmaking.
That is, he listed his house on OnlineHouseTrading.com. And before long he’d found a match: a Kennesaw resident willing to swap houses.
With home sales languishing, some owners are taking matters into their own hands, becoming do-it-yourself real estate agents through swapping.
House-swapping Web sites work like online dating sites: They make introductions and leave the rest to you.
“Our service stops as soon as they’ve sort of found each other,” explained Sergei Naumov, who founded Florida-based GoSwap.org two years ago.
Owners list their properties, specify where they want to move and wait for e-mail alerts about possible matches. If an agreement is reached, a typical buy-sell transaction usually follows. Lawyers are hired. Appraisals and inspections are done. Loans are made.
Bou, a hotel company employee, made two swaps within nine months. When the Kennesaw house was deemed too small, the father of three traded again for a bigger dwelling in east Cobb County.
Swapping “offers such a great out when there are no buyers out there,” he said.
The Web sites might charge nothing for a brief period or up to $300 if a customer wants greater exposure, including an ad in a magazine. Homeowners save thousands of dollars by not paying agent commissions.
More than 1,000 Atlanta-area properties were listed last week on OnlineHouseTrading.com, according to Brian Stroka, president of the 19-month-old company, also based in Florida.
GoSwap.org had 344 listings from Georgians looking to swap and out-of-state residents seeking Georgia property. The majority of the offers are for homes, but some people want land or businesses.
Stroka said Atlanta is an active swapping locale and surmised that’s because the metro area is transient. But neither he nor Naumov collects data on how many of their listings become swaps.
Dan Thomas, a retired Georgia Tech employee, met his wife through Match.com and agreed house swapping is similar to online dating.
The Thomas family lives in the huge BridgeMill subdivision in Canton. They listed their five-bedroom home two years ago with an agent, but “it was difficult to compete against new construction” and builder concessions. At the same time, home sales everywhere were dwindling.
Only “Looky Lous” — people who weren’t serious about buying — viewed their $359,000 house, Thomas said. Dissatisfied, he Googled, discovered house swapping and listed with GoSwap.org and OnlineHouseTrading.com. His total cost — $19.95.
“It’s kind of exciting,” Thomas said. “I’ve gotten more interest in my home than I had people coming through here during the selling months.”
The Thomases want to move to a smaller house in Kentucky, Ohio, Tennessee or Virginia, depending on where their daughter, Jennifer Johnson, a basketball player at Woodstock High School, goes to college.
So far, he’s put off inquirers who want to move immediately. Thomas’ plan is to aggressively pursue a swap in several weeks when his wife, Leslie Thomas, an elementary school teacher in Roswell, is closer to retirement.
Realtors say they’re not worried house swapping will thin their ranks.
“It’s not like buying an airline ticket or appliance on the Internet,” said Scott Simpson, immediate past president of the Atlanta Board of Realtors.
“I do not think it will become commonplace.”
Jim Alexander, the board’s president, said a house is “still an emotional buy. You’ve got to walk in and feel and smell that house. You want your real estate agent involved. That’s a very complicated process.”
House-swapping Web sites want agents to get involved in order to make trading easier and boost the success stories.
Stephen Fyffe, who works in computer support, listed with a flat-fee multiple listing service and with craigslist but had no luck selling his Powder Springs home. So he tried swapping, with the help of a flat-fee agent, who charged $500 to provide forms and advice.
A California investor with a house in Alpharetta spotted Fyffe’s listing and the two made a trade.
They agreed their two properties would be worth the same — $240,000. The investor’s only expenses were legal fees. His bank treated the swap as a collateral exchange, so a new mortgage was not required. Fyffe said he paid several thousand dollars in closing costs.
“You have what they want and they have what you want,” he said. “I would do it again in a heartbeat. It was really easy.”
Bou advised that swappers be flexible about price and locations, and make sure the paperwork states the purchases are occurring at exactly the same time.
“The absolute key to a swap is ‘simultaneous,’” he said.
Labels: Georgia, Real Estate, trading homes
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Brian Vanderhoff @ 8:31 AM
