Scottish homeowners who want to move are opting to swap their homes rather than buying and selling as a way of avoiding being left with unsellable properties and the burden of expensive bridging loans.

The slump in house sales has led to a rise in the number of house swaps where homes are matched with people who want to trade up or down but are unable to sell in a normal chain.

Hundreds of people are already advertising their properties for exchange on the internet and next month Remax Scotland, one of the country’s largest estate agents, will become the first to operate a dedicated property exchange service.

The company, which has a network of 70 franchises across Scotland, said the service had been set up after demand from clients and would match up people wanting to relocate to different parts of the country.

“The client lists their own property and tells us exactly what they are looking for and in what area and we try to find them a match,” explained Scott Marshall, the company’s vice-president of operations.

“It gives our clients a facility to advertise exactly what they are looking for.

“We will be able to pair clients together more easily because they know exactly what it is they are looking for. It’s a good facility to match clients who are in a similar position, somebody moving from Glasgow to Edinburgh because of work will find someone from Edinburgh who has just been offered a job in Glasgow.”

On the property swap website Homeswapper4sale.co.uk, clients input details of where they want to move to, the size of the house they’re looking for, and the price range, as well as uploading details and pictures of their property.

If two sellers are interested in each other’s homes, they arrange viewings and proceed as they would on any other house purchase. Both homes have to be valued for the mortgage, and any shortfall in value has to be paid.

Paul Weaver, brand manager of the website, which he describes as a “dating” service for homes, says there are more than 5,000 properties registered. About 500 of the properties are in Scotland, where the number of house sales has dropped by nearly 40% in the past year.

Online home swappers avoid estate agent fees but stamp duty, home reports and solicitor charges will still apply.

“Estate agents are only doing about one sale a week if they are lucky,” said Weaver.

“We have facilitated about 5,000 matches since launching. Scotland is a real hot spot.”

Mark Horden of the Glasgow Solicitors Property Centre said house swaps are a useful way of getting the market moving during a recession but predicted they will not last. “I doubt this will become an established part of the market because I don’t think this is an approach people would take if the market was operating normally,” he said. “It’s more likely to be a short term measure.”

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