You buy my house and I'll buy yours.....

Trade in your old house and get a new house is the offer being made by one homebuilder in an effort to get the property market moving again in south Co Dublin.

Philip Conlon built Latton, a lavish five-bedroom house on a prime site at the foot of Killiney Hill, but hasn't had a single offer since it went on the market for €2.6 million 10 weeks ago.

Now he's dropped the price by €200,000 and he's also offering buyers the chance to "trade in" their existing home in order to move.

The offer is aimed at buyers who want to trade up - or down - to the lavishly fitted two-storey house, but who cannot sell their own house in the current market.

"We've had about 120 viewers through the house, but they're all saying the same thing, that they can't sell their own home," says Conlon, who is 40 years in the building business.

In the event that the older house is less valuable than the new, the purchaser will have to pay the difference between the two.

However, they will also benefit from a stamp duty saving of €150,000 since Latton is a newbuild. Stamp duty of €70,000 applies to the house as opposed to €220,000 on a second-hand home of the same price.

Terms and conditions will apply, says Conlon, who will need to be "happy with the type of property and location" being offered to him. If a suitable buyer emerges, he plans to renovate the older house and put it back on the market "when things improve".

Exchanging houses isn't a new phenomenon. It happened during previous slowdowns in the property market when people found it difficult to offload new houses and resorted to swopping them with buyers who wanted the advantages of newbuild.

The lower stamp duty is clearly a valuable incentive in Killiney where there is a shortage of large newly-built family homes.

Latton is for sale through Gunne Residential where Brian Nolan is handling enquiries.