WORLD PROPERTY CHANNEL ®

I don't know about you, but I am always suspicious and often amused at the number of buying and selling schemes presented daily on the Internet. 

Take the home-swapping story that was recently reported by The Associated Press. 

A family in Atlanta traded its appraised $340,000 single-family house for a $380,000 appraised home in Deland, FL.  The owners claim they decided to try home swapping after failing to sell their homes through local brokers for six months.

Six months?  That is not a lengthy time frame in today's volcanic home market, my friends.  Some sellers are still waiting, even after a year or so, as this Recession enters its 17th month.

The swappers in the Atlanta-Deland deal posted physical details of their properties on a supposedly free Internet site. 

A Florida mortgage company handled the paper work for both parties because the so-called "swap" technically involved each party buying the other's home and, for the record, getting a new mortgage.

The swap took about three months to complete. Both owners maintain they are satisfied with the deal they made.

Well, bully for them, I say. And good luck to all home swappers like these two in the near future. 

But I call the whole episode insanity.  Pure, unadulterated insanity.

There are any number of risky points associated with Internet home swapping, but I'll just go over a few.

For starters, listing all of the property's physical details, including the address, is gold to Internet hackers.  Even a so-called protected site with a little picture of a lock in the bottom right hand corner of the page is not 100 percent proof of total security, in my humble and computer illiterate opinion. 

Disclosing appraised values, original prices paid for the homes and outstanding mortgage balances give thieves just the basic information they generally need to pull off a scam--with you as the potential victim.

Call me old-fashioned and behind-the-times, but if I am going to sell or even trade a $350,000 home, I want a professional broker in my corner.  I want a broker with a proven track record of comparable home sales and one that has been in the business for at least five years.

And, yes, I would give the broker a specified time frame to sell my property, but I would also provide an option in the contract to extend the time frame, if I chose to do so.

Internet home swapping, selling and buying properties may work for some folk, but count me out on that trip.  I want a real, live pro representing me, one that I can call and get regular updates when available.

And that's the way I see it - for now.    

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