My Business & Mortgage Blog

Stumped home sellers look to make a trade

‘Swaps’ grow in popularity as market slump, financing problems deepen:

Blynda and Leonard Masters wanted to buy a bigger home in Jacksonville, Fla., so they could entertain more and host extended family. Like many would-be home buyers in this market, however, they faced an increasingly common financing problem: They couldn’t borrow to buy a new property until they sold their old one.

The Masters didn’t think they could buy the property since they hadn’t sold theirs. But the agent running the open house floated a radical proposition: The Masters could “swap” their house with the seller. That is, they and the seller could sell their houses to one another and schedule a near-simultaneous closing that would let both parties avoid financing complications.