ABC News has an article on the act of houseswapping. Now get those evil thoughts out of your mind, it is something that is completely benign and legitimate. Houseswapping is the act of essentially trading homes between two households.

And it sounds so easy and simple in the article. But in my opinion it looks to be one of those ideas that when it works it is noteworthy and a heck of a story, but most of the time trying to pull off the deal is probably more work than any benefit accrued. For all of the pieces to fall into place for two families to want to swap homes in different parts of the country almost defies imagination.

Think about it, the houses would have to be the right fit for the families in both size and price, the style of the home and the location for the relocating families would have to align, and there would have to be the negotiations on the subtle differences in price and repairs that both parties would have to agree upon to get the deal done.

While the concept of houseswapping sound interesting, the reality of the process seems terribly painful.

Here’s how it works: Each family sells one house in one transaction, and then buys another house in a separate transaction. It just happens that they’re buying each other’s houses.

While it’s that simple, both the Sawtelles and Farrs agree that one of the downsides of swapping houses is they couldn’t be as picky as they might be in a traditional transaction, but they were happy about the price.

“We saved a lot of money. For one thing we ended up using one real estate agent instead of two. And because he was doing two deals at once he was willing to cut his commission tremendously,” Roy Farr said.  via ABC News

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