Released: February 04, 2008

Permanent house swaps: a new trend?

Source: Jennifer Levitz, Wall Street Journal [Baltimore Sun] (Free Registration)

Eager to move closer to their grandchildren in Tennessee, retirees Allen and Wilma Sawtelle put their home in the Southwestern Nevada town of Pahrump up for sale in August. They got nowhere. “The market is just dead,” Allen Sawtelle said. At their open house, he said, “I think one guy came, and he’d been drinking.”

Poking around the Internet for home-selling tips, Sawtelle, a 71-year-old former investigator for a law firm, discovered that anxious sellers like him are trying a new tactic: connecting with other sellers who might agree to “swap”—or buy one another’s property. The Sawtelles found a couple who were looking to move to Nevada, and whose house for sale was within driving distance of their grandchildren.

The concept of trading homes temporarily for vacations has long existed, but now it’s being adapted to the slumping real-estate market as people, particularly in the Sunbelt and other slow spots, scout for ways to unshackle themselves from their property.

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