Cash-strapped parents trade online
Updated on 06 March 2009
Cash-strapped parents trade online
Thrifty parents are fighting off the effects of the recession by snapping up everything from second-hand uniform to musical instruments online.
Two leading internet trading communities, schoolstrader.com and primaryschoolstrader.com, have seen an 80% increase in traffic in the last three months.
Their free advertising service is booming, with families keen to sell off furniture or rent out a holiday home.
Schoolstrader.com, established in 2006, caters exclusively to parents sending their children to private schools.
But with parents handing over around £10,000 a year per child in fees, many are turning to the website as a way of saving money in other areas.
Primaryschoolstrader.com which launched last year, caters for families with children attending 25,000 state primary schools around the country.
Website director Neil Canetty-Clarke said: "Our sites are a timely antidote to the credit crunch - families across the UK are using these free school community trading sites to save money and raise cash.
"We have seen strong traffic growth in the last quarter - with total combined page hits across our sites up over 80% - as more and more people across the UK are hearing about school community trading.
"Families are saving money by buying second-hand rather than new and we see parents trading all sorts of things, much of it outgrown or barely-used."
Favourite items to trade or sell include musical instruments, sports kit, toys, holiday homes, pets, tuition and uniform. But there are some more unusual items up for grabs, including a pony which "does not kick or bite" for £500, a six-bedroom house in Dorset for £495,000 and even two free pet cats, named Stig and Inga.
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