Has anyone ever part exchanged their house with another seller?

[polkadotdelight]

Im just wondering how complicated it is. We have approached the vendor (via our estate agent) of a house we are very interested in. Our house has been on the market for 3 months with little interest, we are not in one of these high price areas and the house we like is tenanted. Our own house would make an ideal rental property, lots of them on the estate are rentals but I would prefer not to do that ourselves though.

The other house is higher value and so we are quietly hoping that the landlord may accept on the basis that he will be releasing equity and because of area/condition of the house he would attract similar rental value.

Of course Im only wishful thinking for now but has anyone done this? Was it straightforward?

Yes and yes.

We were moving from a flat to a house. The house was quite unusual in style - quite art deco which people can be quite marmite-y about. We were chatting with the vendors that we liked it as our flat wa sin a similar era block of apartments. Can't remember how it went from there, but they ended up buying our flat, we bought the house and made a balancing payment to them.

The key issue is that you have to agree a value for the properties, as it is used for stamp duty and CGT purposes, plus for your mortgage valuations etc. You'll need a lawyers, but it isn't something they will find particularly difficult.

Overall, it did not make the transaction more complex, but it also did not make it particularly easier, other than obviously it really helps with the chain, and it means you don't mess each other around.

Brilliant. Thank you!

We did it too, the vendors were trying to downsize and we wanted to go bigger (from semi to detached), and to our surprise they asked to do a part exchange. Both houses were already on the market so we agreed to pay each other the asking price.
As said above it didn't make it that much easier apart from no chain, but we found out later that the delays were mainly caused by the vendor trying to raise more money to bail out his business.

Still in the house 20 years later and very happy here!

I bought a house and the people who owed that house bought mine once. It was a straightforward transaction just the same as buying any other house.
But both of us could afford the deposit and mortgage for the full value of the houses, no discount was arranged for either of us.

Thank you!