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long story shore, we traded that property for a $25,000.00 thirty foot moving van and 2 free and clear golf course lots worth $7,500.00 each simply because the guy with the lots and van would rather have the 3 units and we wanted the van and lots. We compensated the agent with the pre-agreed upon $300.00 listing fee in the event we sold the property ourselves.

The next property we had was a good high equity single family 4 bedrooms, 2.5 bath house under land contract at $69,800.00 with a 20 year payout on an underlying mortgage of approximately $40,500.00. This we "over" traded to guy in a sale and we took in a hung forklift work about $24,000.00 and we paid another $300.00 flat fee to the agent.

The next property was a 3/2 single family house under contract at $59,900. with a $42,000.00 underlying mortgage and a good cash flow of $100.00 per month. That house sold with the down payment of a large backhoe.

The next property was a good 2 bedroom, 1 bath single family house under contract at $43,900.00 with a $250.00 per month net positive cash flow and an underlying mortgage of $32,900.00. That house went for a small forklift and a good truck.

During the course of this one day of trading, we also had our list of personal inventory which consisted of some new Jacuzzi marble tubs etc. We trade those for a good free and clear lot and then the lot for $5,000.00 worth of new commercial carpeting, 15 brand new shower doors, an assortment of exterior wooden doors, some Anderson thermo pane windows and 15 sheets of 4 x 8 tinted exterior tempered glass panels.

The moral of this story is that human beings are taught to invest a certain emotional power in money. Once that training takes hold, they will naturally want to devalue anything else that replaces money. So what we had to do was to think more about what the money would buy, i.e. what we would buy with the money once we had it. We also had to be working with "like kind" thinkers. We know a lot of them and some of them have no integrity and some have a lot of integrity. We decided to only work with the later.

It takes a lot of hard work, but so does everything each of us does. The secret was to know which marketplace to go to. It certainly wasn't the cash marketplace at that time.

Albert Jay Nock, in the "Memoirs of a Superfluous Man" once wrote, "Money does not pay for anything, never has, never will. It is an economic axiom as old as the hills that goods and services can be paid for only with goods and services." Albert Einstein once said, "If I had my life to live all over again, I would elect to be a trader of goods rather than a student of sciences. I think barter is a noble thing. I need to know much more about it". Perhaps some of your need to know more about it! Maybe I'll teach a barter or trading workshop!

We had a fun day. We got our equity out of our properties and into the goods and services we need to get on with our lives during a time that the market was not a good one. We kept the integrity in the marketplace by not discounting the properties for fast cash sales. We got every penny of our equity. The other guys got exactly what they wanted and we got exactly what we were looking for. What more can anyone ask for?

Learn more about this author, Arlene Wright-Correll.
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