Investing Property Swapping - is it legal?

[staceyo]

Hi

Have a curly one here:

Are there any legal implications that wouldn't allow you to swap investment properties, ie make a deal with someone and sign over your respective property to the other (obviously looking at valuation comparisons etc).

Reason I ask it that, we have a great property in Darwin that we reluctantly will have to sell (not due to finance reasons but personal circumtances), the funds would go straight to another hopefully well placed investment property. To save on agents commissions etc, I wondered if I could say advertise of one of those private sale sites but also state that we'd be willing to consider trading properties.

Has anyone heard of this sort of thing? If so where to look for this sort of thing?

Thanks
Stacey

 

[Rixter]

I would say because of the name of ownership on the title changing, that event would trigger stamp duty & CGT liability to both parties.

 

[marg4000]

It would be difficult to find a buyer for your property whose property you like.

If you can, it is simply you sell to them and they sell to you. You only save agents commission, but are still up for all the other costs - stamp duty, legals and CGT.

You can achieve the same benefit by doing a private sale, then simply buy the property you want.
Marg