MIAMI — Diane Peek needed to move from Georgia to central Florida, but for six months no one even showed interest in the house she and her husband built outside Atlanta.
In suburban Orlando, Andrew Bou needed to sell his family home to move to Atlanta, but also no luck. Peek and Bou each joined a website that matches people willing to trade their homes. They punched in their needs, their likes and dislikes and like two singles finding love on a dating site, they became a match. About seven months later, they swapped homes.
Peek and Bou are part of a small but growing number of homeowners who are turning to the Internet to swap properties. The sites — there are about a dozen — allow interested homeowners to browse potential swaps narrowed by giving preferences like price range, number of bedrooms and bathrooms, and city of choice. The homeowner also creates an account with the same information for others to browse.
“It was a wonderful experience for us,” Peek said. “To me it’s just a great thing with the housing market the way it is right now. It’s a great way to hold on to your equity if you have to move.”
But some experts say they don’t expect online house trading to become a major trend because in most cases it’s usually simpler to sell one’s home, move to the other city and house hunt. Swapping also limits choices because the traders have to be swapping regions.
Brian Stroka, owner of onlinehousetrading.com, the site Peek used to swap her home, said the swaps aren’t pure trades — it’s a little more complicated than that. Each party buys the other’s home, getting a new mortgage. That gives a bit more flexibility as the homes can be of widely differing values.
On his site, it’s free to post a proposed trade, profile and to look at properties. There is a US$29.95 one-time fee for advanced searches and he makes money from advertising.
The Tampa entrepreneur has no way of tracking successful trades unless someone writes to thank him. He says his site is growing fast. He founded it in June 2007 and it has more than 50,000 profiles and gets about 75 new ones a day. He said he started his site after the “market started to get worse and worse and people couldn’t sell their homes.”
That’s why Megan Seitz, a Detroit real estate agent, launched mkhomeswap.com in February. It has 270 registered users, who for a fee ranging from $20-$150 can trade, rent or sell their homes.
“Let’s say they found another home who was listed for swap, they could contact each other. It’s completed like a normal transaction,” she said.
Michael Pastushkov, owner of besthouseswap.com, said the main difference between old-fashioned home buying and online swapping is “you cut out the middle man,” often saving agent commissions.
But real estate agents use the method too.
Jose Bribiesca, owner of JB Realty Group Inc., in North Miami Beach, said that during Florida’s housing boom sellers could name their price for their property, he said. There was no need to trade.
“Now there is huge supply and a low demand,” he said.
He specializes in trading, posting his ads on Craigslist and other sites. He takes a commission if he is able to trade a property.