Swap Shop!

I'm really trying to find new ways that will enable us to move house.  My short-term plan of winning the lottery, so far, isn't succesful, so I'm trying to come up with other things. 

My first thought was a house raffle, where people buy a ticket for the raffle (say £1000 each), we only need to sell 200 tickets, and then someone can win our house!  Whilst there are a couple of site that will help with that such as http://win-house.co.uk/blog/running-your-own-competition.html, house raffles are actually illegal in the UK.  This can be overcome by setting up a competition, rather than a raffle (eg to enter you have to pay however much and answer a question), but it seems like a lot of effort.  Especially considering that many houses that you can win are over £1M and many of them haven't sold enough tickets, so have remained unsold (though the winner gets a cash prize of the profits).  Given that our mortgage is currently £120k and our house worth approx £105k, I'm guessing that people probably won't be up for spending £1k for a chance of winning it.  Even if we dropped the price of the ticket to £10, then we would need to sell 14,000(!) just to make the recommended 15% to cover costs!

So, now I'm inspired by The Red Paperclip story (http://oneredpaperclip.blogspot.com/).  You know the one - a guy starts with a paper clip, keeps swapping it until finally he has a house!  Simples!  So, now I've been looking at various swapping websites.

My first difficulty, is that most 'swapping' websites are nothing of the sort, but rather are selling websites.  That is fine, but I'm cash poor, but have lots of stuff. I freecycle a lot (as ebay generally costs me the listing fees, but doesn't make much money), and maybe just maybe I can swap my old things for something better?

The only true swapping sites that I have found are http://www.preloved.co.uk/ and http://www.u-exchange.com/.  (I have come across a few skills-swap sites, but atm I'm reserving my 'skill' of tutoring for paying customers! lol)  Even http://www.craigslist.org/about/sites (which the red paperclip guy used) is mainly selling.

Whilst browsing the first two sites, I discovered that you can swap your house!  Most of the sites, if you type into google, are links to swapping council houses.  Not being a council tenant, that's not what i'm looking for.  However, there are swapping sites for owners of houses.  Some of them are proper swaps, some are selling sites (but without estate agent fees).  Still, I'll list them all here, as it's interesting to know what is about:
http://www.houseswaptogo.co.uk/
http://www.swap-a-property.co.uk/index.php
http://www.uk-auction-websites.co.uk/
http://www.ukpropertyswap.com/
http://www.switchproperties.co.uk/

So, now I am going to raid my stuff, and try my damnedest to up-swap my things.  TBH, I am tempted to set up a pure swapping website, as I do feel that is lacking.  the main thing holding me back is lack of interest/awareness.  I'm sure the interest is there - just see how popular freecycle is! - but setting up a website, and relying on other people to share it, word of mouth; will it work?  Or will it just end up being a list of my junk (sorry, I mean 'highly desireable stuff') and nobody interested at all.

If i did set it up, it would require free membership and absolutely no money to exchange hands.  All 'adverts' would be 'offers' and it would be up to the 'wanter' (that's a T, not a K - hehe) to make an offer.  All adverts expire after 7 days, at which point the 'giver' can choose from the offers that has been made, that which is the best for him.  If there have been no offers, or nothing that he wants, he can relist the item, which again, would automatically expire after 7 days.  Regarding actually swapping, it would be up to the 'wanter' to arrange delivery/postage/collection etc; so it may be better to set this up regionally perhaps?  Maybe not at first, I'll wait until there were enough members for things to start moving.  Maybe have ratings (ebay stylee) of 'givers' so that people know who they can trust, and if someone doesn't swap/send the item, they will get removed from the site.  Not sure how the details will work, I'll have to give it some more thought, but if you are reading this, do you think it'll be a good idea?  Would you be interested in something like that?