For hundreds of recession-hit Shropshire homeowners looking to sell up, the past 12 months have been a bit of a nightmare. But not for Neville and Lissi Swales . . . being unable to sell their house turned into a blessing in disguise.

It’s been exactly a year since the couple put their home on the market with the idea of moving to Bishop’s Castle. Today, after launching a website just before Christmas to allow people to contact one another directly and part-exchange their homes, they are also selling 2,000 properties belonging to other people, constituting a portfolio worth more than £500 million.

“It’s been amazing,” says web designer Neville, who has finally completed his dream move to Shropshire and has set up his online house-swapping site www.MyHomeForYours.co.uk

“The website has gone from strength to strength and it’s become my full-time job. I don’t suppose I will become a millionaire, but I’m happy that at the moment it is covering its costs.”

Like many great ideas, Neville’s was born of frustration – being unable to flog his own home in Leicestershire due to the stagnant housing market.

“I had a eureka moment,” he says. “I sat bolt upright in bed and thought ‘What if I could swap or part-exchange my house? Many people are desperate to sell. I’ve spoken to lots of people who have poured their hearts out that they could not sell and who said if only they’d thought of it before.”

In short, www.MyHomeForYours.co.uk is a property part-exchange website for those willing to accept part-exchange against their home, and for those offering their home in part-exchange against another.

The process involves exchanging your existing home as part payment on another property and allows you to buy a new build or a second-hand property.

Two homeowners agree prices and exchange houses, with one person moving up and another moving down. The cash difference between the value of the properties is paid by the person moving up. Once a price is agreed, a solicitor is instructed and they then carry out the rest of the work.

Neville says the advantages of part-exchange is that selling can be an expensive, slow and uncertain process.

He says: “It can easily take six to 12 months or more to sell, which may mean losing the property you want. Opportunities to sell are limited, especially in today’s poor market conditions. And, even if you secure a buyer, the deal isn’t necessarily done as around 50 per cent of sales can fall through at any time – even at the very last minute.”

He adds: “The certainty of a part-exchange offer lets you to act like a cash buyer and negotiate discounts on your purchase.”

Charles McDowell of McDowell Properties in London has been impressed by the website and says: “As the market continues to deteriorate, I think we are going to see a lot more of this kind of creative thinking.”

The sheer number of properties listed on the website illustrates that, despite the housing standstill, people are still desperate to move. And Neville has seen a rise in people taking matters into their own hands, deploying such quirky selling techniques as trying to raffle their homes off, throwing in luxury cars or even part-exchanging property for motorhomes.

Unusual swaps? “There are a lot of people living in the UK who have property in Spain and are looking to sell. One says he would accept a motorhome for his flat in Spain.”

And Neville himself has been contacted with an unusual swap on his home.

“Five flats in a rundown area for our house, because they wanted to start a foster home,” he says.

But his online house swap concept was initially met with resistance – largely from estate agents in Leicestershire.

Says Neville: “It was like I was speaking a different language. They were very negative, they weren’t sure if people wanted this and I met a brick wall.”

With the web skills to do it, Neville decided to go ahead with the site anyway, saying: “If it did nothing else than sell our property in Ashby de la Zouch, then great, but I thought there was an opportunity for a site for people to contact other homeowners directly.”

He is happy for estate agents to list their properties on the site, which he describes as “an introduction agency for property owners” and lets sellers take matters into their own hands.

Potential house swappers are charged a flat fee of £45 to list their properties and this also gives them access to contact other vendors looking to swap.

“I’m trying to aim towards a general public who are not necessarily savvy. They can take their own pictures of their homes with a digital camera and put them on the site. They can edit listings and they can de-activate listings – they have a lot of control of how they market their homes.”

The site has properties listed from all over the country and from around world – that’s the beauty of the internet. But Neville has just had a number of “for sale” boards made to create a stronger local presence, as his gut instinct is that many exchanges will happen in the immediate area of those properties.

The snowballing of the Neville’s creative idea is certainly keeping him busy.

“It’s ridiculously long hours. Some mornings I start at 5.30 and I can still be doing it at 8 or 9 o’clock at night.”

The site is very much in its infancy and one area Neville is looking to tweak is the monitoring of completed exchanges.

But he adds: “I see listings grow daily. On Boxing Day we had 40 in one day.”

By Ben Bentley