AMA about home exchange holidays (we have done about 30)

[samarrange]

Anything you've always wanted to know about home exchange but were afraid to ask. We've been doing it since 1996 when our kids were little.

Interesting. Do you have to let your insurance company know in advance or is it more like having family use your house when you’re not there (you wouldn’t bother informing the insurers for that)?

round us short term letting licensing has been brought in in a big way but I imagine that won’t apply because no money is changing hands?

I'm really fancying it. Only thing is dh wouldn't let them use his car it'd have to be my little Corsa. His would be better as it's a Golf. We'd have to hide his in the garage or in the village 😂

You can almost see the sea from where we're going which should be within a couple of months. We're already near by say 5 minutes walk. Probably be next year before we're up for doing house swapping.

Great thread @samarrange 😊

We notify our insurers who put a caveat on that we are fully covered except if the swappers nick anything we are not covered.

Feeling abit meh about it to be honest as this year we have had 3 amazing offers we all got excited looked into flights well into communication with them then they pulled out. Before any money spent etc but we had all got excited. This never used to happen but after the third time in 6 weeks I got so cross I booked a hotel. So this summer we are NOT flipping house swapping thank god.

If no money is changing hands then there is nothing in your insurance policy to say that one of the normal residents of the house has to be there. Imagine if you went for a night away and had a babysitter come round to sleep over, and something went wrong — that's a fairly normal thing to be covered.

A while back there was a fire in an apartment building where a family member of ours lives. The flat was owned by a woman, W, and her son X lived in it, paying either zero or a peppercorn rent. He was away for Christmas and had lent the flat to two friends, Y and Z. They managed to set fire to the kitchen and destroyed the flat, and 3 or 4 others in the block suffered smoke damage. There was an investigation by the insurance company, but in the end they determined that since no money had been given by Y or Z to either W or X it was all covered.

Any tips on taking photos of the house? We are seriously considering this now!

One per room max. Err on the side of fewer. Your under the stairs storage space with potential to convert to a loo might be a key factor to a buyer, but for house swapping the house itself isn't all that important, if that makes sense.

Also, people coming to England won't be choosing between three houses in Bristol; they'll be choosing between a house in Bristol, a bungalow in Worcester, and a flat in Oxford.

The bedding configuration (singles/doubles, number per room, bunks or not, etc) is the thing everyone looks for.

Another thing to be clear about is whether or not you have and/or can/can't look after pets. Some people are actively looking for pet care, while others won't come to your place at all if you have a cat, even if goes to another house during the swap, because of allergies.

Very helpful thank you. We're actually in Oxford!
I think we might get some interest hopefully.
No Interest in looking after any pets!

We once had a week in a beautiful house in the south of france with amazing views and a pool just to look after their cat. They didn’t even visit our house!

@TheaBrandt that's such a shame. I couldn't do that. I hope they had good reasons? Can you give feedback to warn others?

They were perfectly entitled to do so in each case it was Americans who proposed a two week swap initially but then rowed back and wanted one week to see other places but a long haul
one week swap not worth it for us. Just putting the counter view yes it can be amazing but there are downsides. Your holiday is reliant on the goodwill of randoms.

We've done 3 swaps so far, with one planned for this summer, and I'm now a total convert! Thought it might be helpful to give some details:

First swap was about 10 years ago to a suburb of Manchester and a decent but very standard 1970s house. We were living in a decent but very standard small 1950s house in Watford. Both families with small children. Was excellent to have a free holiday and go somewhere with everything we needed and explore a different area.

Second swap was last summer - to the Netherlands! Through Guardian House Swap website. Now we are in a bigger more attractive Victorian house but still in Watford. So not a particular tourist destination, but close to London, and actually easy to get to loads of other places. Couple in their 60s swapped with us, they worked from home for a bit, he visited UK based colleagues, they did a bit of tourist stuff. Their house was fantastic - Victorian -era in Leiden, very much lived in/full of books/quirky/kitchen honestly looked like original 1970s. Clean but not at all pristine. House also came with an English lodger on the 3rd floor (who we knew about in advance) who was a really interesting woman! Was a brilliant swap. When we had a problem with our car the Dutch swap guy was v v helpful (over WhatsAppand a phone call) with recommending an emergency mechanic, which neighbour could help with jump leads etc etc.

Third swap was later last summer to near Rutland water in the UK - they had a modern fairly large house in a decent but not particularly touristy village - again it was excellent to explore somewhere else and have free accommodation! I think they liked our house because of the easy access to London. The wife recommended People Like Us (PLU) house swap website - terrible name but good site.

Swap now arranged through PLU for this summer to Sweden. The house we are going to is smaller and probably less "nice" than our house, and in a decent looking but not particularly touristy town near Gothenburg. But the family sound genuine, the house looks fine, and it'll be a great way to see Sweden (which is pricey, so great to have free accommodation).

We have lots of other messages of swaps we don't want to /can't do; equally I've sent out lots of messages to people who often can't swap. But when it works it's brilliant! We already have a few people who we have said we can't swap with this year but maybe next. Including one in Mauritius!

We belong to HomeExchange.com and pay a similar annual fee. On HE you can do reciprocal (simultaneous and non-simultaneous swaps) or use guest points. People stay at your home and 'pay' in GPs which you then use to 'pay' to stay somewhere else.

We've never done a straight reciprocal swap, although we have a couple staying here this summer as part of a non-simultaneous swap (we styed in their Chicago downtown loft appt in 22).

So far we've stayed in a cottage in the Scottish Highlands, a luxury villa in Venice Island in Florida, a 3 bed semi in Nantes, an apartment in between San Diego and LA, and then last summer we did three weeks in New England and stayed in three different properties (in Marblehead, Cape Code and Kennebunkport). This summer we are staying in an apartment on the South of France.

We have two primary age (long term) foster children. Hotels are very expensive as we need a family suite with separate sleeping areas. HE has been a godsend financially!

We haven't experienced any issues at all. We leave our house in a clean, tidy state and arrange for a cleaner to visit at the end of each stay (guests can pay for extra cleans if they wish). We live in a 4 bed semi n a very dull town on the south coast, between Portsmouth and Southampton. People like to stay here as it's 1.5 hrs from London, 20 mins to decent beaches, 45 mins to sites like Stonehenge etc. We get a lot of requests!

How does it work if you aren't doing a reciprocal swap? I kind of get the idea of gust points, but where are you while someone is staying in your house if you're not staying in theirs? On a different sort of holiday?

@Ineffable23 I imagine they'll be on holiday elsewhere? So you search for available dates like you would for any holiday.

Anyone who's done this do you put pics of local visitor attractions etc too?

We live in a tourist city and it’s allowed us to travel mainly to North America but also within the UK / Europe. NA exchanges have been brilliant. I have in the past spent time looking for hosts to swap with but now mainly wait to see who wants to swap with us. One advantage is that you can agree to have milk / bread etc in / use up store items. Means when you arrive you have more time to relax!

So interesting. We are about to embark on our first house swap in 2 weeks. We don’t have any spare wardrobe space so have bought a clothes rail which we intend putting up in a spare room which has a full length mirror. Do you think that will be okay?
I am both excited and nervous at the same time!

Will you come back and let us know how it goes please?

What do you do with your PC with your whole life and financial details on it when you have strangers in the house?

Put a password on it?

We have used Sabbaticalhomes.com which is for payment but someone's home. The one we rented for 6 weeks (I am an academic and was indeed on sabbatical but you don't need to be) they put all their computer equipment in the basement which they didn't lock but our small DCs somehow didn't even spot the door.
At the same time we had a Ukrainian house-sitter who paid our bills.
Neither house was pristine but it was for 6 weeks so we cleared a wardrobe (put the clothes in a hanging wardrobe box in the basement) and our hosts cleared all their closets. We included our cleaner.

We are doing a short swap initially of 3 days and thank you … I will let you know how it goes.

It's a laptop, so we take it along. But you can just lock it with a password. Of course, they could then take the hard drive out and attach a harness to that and clone your entire drive to sniff through at their leisure, but swapping houses seems like a very inefficient way of stealing data.

We don't bother, since we assume that our partners can use Google Maps. We leave 3 or 4 restaurant recommendations, and maybe an occasional flyer that we picked up, but everything is online now, so anything we might make a copy of would quickly be out of date. (I just updated our "house guide" for our forthcoming swap and had to remove two of the restaurants as they have closed in the last year.)

Do you need to own your home? I live in Southwold, but in a council property.

Certainly from the point of view of the organisation we use (Intervac) there is no requirement to own the property.

As for permission to do it, I answered previously that as far as I know it doesn't matter, but we've only ever rented privately. You might want to check with the council, with of course the attendant risks if they don't understand and decide to you put you on a "maybe subletting!!!" list, so perhaps ask for a friend. As I said in the previous answer, it's like having people to stay only you aren't there, if no money changes hands.