From the South Sentinal:
Need a different house? Some S. Floridians are trading as a way to beat the soft market
Two or three years ago, a South Florida homeowner looking to move could find a property, sign the papers and sell an existing house quickly to one breathless buyer or another.
But the new reality in the region’s marshmallow-soft real estate market is that homes in Palm Beach and Broward counties languish for weeks or months without a showing, let alone an offer.
That ruins other deals contingent on buyers being able to unload their current properties. So savvy but skittish homeowners are considering an alternative: house-swapping.
They’re turning to the Internet, hoping to find someone somewhere with whom to trade. In essence, they’re willing to buy each other’s homes as a way around the prolonged housing slump that analysts say could last into next year.
Eight months ago, Brian Karpf of Weston started Caretotrade.com, a Web site similar to Craigslist that lets people buy, sell, trade and barter items.
“I woke up one morning and there were 20 to 25 houses listed for trade,” said Karpf, 25, a third-year law student at Florida International University. “I had no idea that people could trade houses.”
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Caretotrade.com now has more than 400 real estate listings, and about three quarters of those are potential house swaps, Karpf said. Recent postings include: the owner of a home in Spring Hill, north of Tampa, looking to trade for a home in South Florida; and the owner of a condominium on Hollywood beach trying to trade for a home in New York or New Jersey.