A Nationwide Real Estate Agency..

The excessive commuting distances today and the associated traffic gridlock is an enormous problem with very few possible solutions. It wastes fuel, time, and the environment. It takes Fathers away from young children. It requires many families to own two cars. Building the infrastructure to cope with commuting and traffic gridlock is even now beyond our financial ability.
The only real solution is to encourage people to move house to be closer to their work place.
To this end, we will establish Industro-Villages and a Nation wide Real Estate Agency. (a 'VS' Estate Agency)
The current Real Estate system is too expensive and cumbersome. It effectively prevents commuters from moving house every time they move jobs.
If 50% of commuters could get to work by bicycle, the nation would save an impending trillion dollars!

• This "VS Estate Agency" will be setup on the POEM model (Public Owned, Expert Managed) (the same model as the Police, Army or NASA)
• As a 'Low Profit' entity, this agency will be able to facilitate a house sale for approx $700 or a swap for approx $1200 flat.
Todays commissions are roughly 3% of sale price or about $15,000 - which obviously prevents most people re-locating closer to their new job or upgrading as more children are born.
• Short term, zero interest 'bridging loans' will enable *eligible* home owners to 'swap' to an equivalent home without waiting for finance or for the sale and settlement of their previous home.
After a job relocation, they could move to a new home within a month!
( *eligible* home owners will be those with a high commuting distance;  Those with more children than bedrooms;  Those who wish to move closer to their family group.)
• The 'VS-Agency' will partner with "Google Real Estate" to provide free listings and 'Street Views' of all the houses for sale or rent in your area. The Agencies website database will hold perhaps 30 images of each house inside and out.
• You can opt to have your profile, payment history and references permanently stored on the VS-Agencies secure database. This will allow you to attach all those details to every application you submit with a single click.
This history of payments and behavior will solve one of the biggest fears facing Rental Landlords - the "Tenants from Hell"
• Another purpose of these Low cost House swaps is to enable families with young children to move closer to their parents.. Most newly marrieds are forced to live a long way from their 'Mums'.  Once children are on the way, not only is the unit too small but they would also greatly benefit from being nearer their Folks.
Typically, a new Mum can be overwhelmed, suffer from depression, need some respite and TLC. In short, she needs her Mum! As more children come along, the house will again be too small and a $1200 House Swap would be affordable. There would also be a massive cost saving to the nation if half the working mums could get Child Care from Grandma.  (And Senior citizens could be closer to their families!)
• The 'VS-agency' will exclusively handle the tens of thousands of new budget priced homes that will be built in 'Industro-Villages' over the next ten years to offset the current "Housing Shortage Crisis".
All these new 'Housing Estates' will include everything a small town needs including a Commercial and Industrial 'hub'.  Businesses will be offered very low rent space on the condition that they assist their employees to move to that estate.  Tenants will be offered discount rent or purchase prices if they work in that hub.  The thousands of surrounding homes will all be within bicycle distance of the hub.
The aim of these 'Villages' is that most residents will not even need one car - let alone two.
• The $700 commissions only applies to the special cases mentioned above. The normal commission on a house sale will be $2000 flat. Many existing Real Estate agents are already cheaper than that and should be able to successfully compete with our 'VS' Real Estate Agency.  There will be a huge need for experienced staff in the thousands of VS Agents, we expect that many of the current Real Estate managers and staff will enlist.