Real Estate
Due to the current slump in the housing market in the United States, houses are staying on the market for longer than anticipated and house swapping has evolved to help buyers and sellers find a more permanent match. As with more traditional house swapping, the internet helps prospective buyers and sellers find a match in their desired location. This form of permanent house swapping is more popular in the Sun Belt and other regions where the market is slower.
This system is not well-established and has a number of kinks that must be dealt with, including how to account for differences in the values of houses. In addition, lenders often must approve the swap and there may be issues related to the house's condition, capital gains and foreclosures that both parties must be aware of.
Currently, none of the house swapping web sites release numbers of successful swaps, and there is speculation by some that they are merely lead generation sites that charge an up front fee to post property without creating successful transactions.
Read more about this topic: House Swapping
Famous quotes containing the words real and/or estate:
“Constant revolutionizing of production ... distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses, his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)
“Sweet are the thoughts that savour of content,
The quiet mind is richer than a crown;
Sweet are the nights in careless slumber spent,
The poor estate scorns Fortune’s angry frown.
Such sweet content, such minds, such sleep, such bliss,
Beggars enjoy, when princes oft do miss.”
—Robert Greene (1558?–1592)