Danny Bragg and his wife, Danika, who own a modern, four-bedroom home in San Bernardino County, are thinking of moving. They're just not yet exactly sure where.
He would like to go back to Texas, specifically to the Woodlands, a town less than 30 miles north of Houston and close to where he lived before moving to California 11 years ago.
Danika, 40, a California native and executive assistant at a civil engineering company, is less keen on Texas. She would prefer somewhere within 50 to 80 miles of where they are now, still close to her mom and work but on the coast.
Danny, 37, a home-based regional insurance sales manager, also loves the beach and sees coastal California, like small-town Texas, as a great place to one day raise kids.
How the couple resolves the issue could depend partly on the emerging practice of home swapping. Through the website Pad4Pad.com, they are hoping to find someone in Texas or California willing to trade for their 1,600-square-foot, four-bedroom home in a gated community in Highland.
For years people have been swapping homes for vacations. Today, the idea of permanent exchanges is gaining support among disillusioned property owners struggling to sell in a glacial real estate market.
Although the number of completed trades isn't being tracked, interest is such that several home-swap websites have sprung up in the last year and now claim close to 40,000 combined swap listings nationwide. Others appear regularly on Craigslist.org.
The wait
The Braggs' home has been on the market for about six months -- the price now reduced to $350,000 from $380,000. "We've exhausted a lot of options," said Danny Bragg, who was searching online when he came across Pad4Pad.
"The concept seemed like a good idea," he said, adding that they've had three serious inquiries so far through the website, though not yet a firm proposal.
Though the number of swap listings is still a small fraction of total property listings, website operators are confident they have hit upon a simple way to help ease today's market woes -- matching buyers and sellers.
"It's like a dating service for home sellers," said Greg Holt, chief executive and co-owner of Denver-based Pad4Pad. "We're bringing people together."
From St. Augustine, Fla., Sergei Naumov, creator and owner of GoSwap.org, agrees. "The concept works as simply as: 'I will buy your house if you buy mine.' "
