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.

Two other questions that nobody has asked here yet, which other people have asked us in real life:

"Do you meet your partners in person?" -- Yes, we like to, if it's possible/practical. For our first few exchanges we would be driving to each other's houses and would try to meet mid-way. With flying it's a bit harder. On one occasion we got a selfie with our partners with them being the other side of a glass wall at the airport. On another we managed a handshake at the gate as we were leaving on the plane that our partners had just arrived on.

"What about eating their/your food?" -- We might have one cheeky bowl of their unusual cereal to try, but if you like it and make a substantial dent in the contents of packet (or finish it) then you're meant to buy a new one. It's not necessary to buy a 100g packet of cumin powder if you use a couple of teaspoons in a recipe. We leave a note saying "Finish anything that's in the fridge", although people generally don't.

Also it's usual to leave some eggs, milk, a loaf of bread, maybe a rotisserie chicken if we know they eat meat, to get your partners started if they arrive late. We have a tradition of leaving a bottle of wine on the table (with the corkscrew out too, if the bottle has a cork - nothing worse than hunting through every drawer in frustration!) and we usually find we've been left something nice when we return.

With homelink there’s a tradition
you leave a meal. So lovely arriving after a long days travel to find a lasagne and a salad waiting for you for tea.

Thank you

Southwold is beautiful and lots of of people would swap with you there.

Do you think a flat in London would be of interest or is it generally houses?

I’m in west wales by the sea, do you think there would be much interest for our house?

Yes to both. Some of our best swaps were to cities it’s amazing being able to live in Paris, London/Berlin for a week you can really explore the city and have a nice base.

Hi OP, we too did house swaps for years and had very few issues. The memorable one was when we forgot the house keys for the house we were staying in (I realised ON the long international flight) and on the same swap, their car broke down (i.e. we did) and they managed to ground and break our brand new car on a 'dog walk' path and had to be hauled out by the local fire brigade! Apparently they were laughed at rather a lot, as no Brit would have ever attempted to go along that path. We just went with the flow though, as they were lovely people, if a little ditsy, and it was truly a relaxing holiday. I do hope that they have fond memories too.

I think lots if people would love to stay in London, particularly if they live in the country and I’m sure flats are just as popular. I would swap with a flat.

We had a wonderful swap with an older lady we had her beautiful flat in Pimlico for 5 days she and her pals took over our house. Teens still talk fondly of the trip.

Yes, both from UK and overseas visitors. Being near the coast is a huge plus. A summer holiday by the sea for the price of the petrol and/or plane ticket to get there is an attractive proposition.

It's quite often houses because historically it was a middle-class family thing, but as I mentioned in a PP, the house/flat/home itself is not really the point. The point is a holiday in free accommodation with cooking facilities, and maybe also use of a car.

When you've never done it there's a tendency to think of it in "estate agent" terms, but anyone with a few swaps under their belt will tell you how relatively unconcerned they are about what the house itself is like.

I used to do flat swaps when I lived in London years ago and we were inundated with requests from all over the place. We had a small (1 bed) flat in a fun part of London and had offers (that we took up) from Venice, Barcelona, St Petersburg and Bakewell (lovely!) as well as masses that we didn’t (mostly Florida…). So yes, there’d be loads of interest!

Could you do it with cats left in the house? And how clutterfree are you?

Cats: Yes, but of course you have to let your partners know. Some will be delighted, others will avoid your listing. We are not cat people at all (DP is allergic) but we looked after a very independent cat in France once — it just needed food and water, and otherwise spent all day outside.

Clutter: Is no problem. If anything we find it endearing. Obviously you try and tidy up the kids' bedroom floors before you leave, but your partners are arriving with a suitcase, not a removal van.

Have you ever came back with unwanted guests? Some places abroad have cockroaches and the likes have you ever came across any or brought any hitchhikers?

We are listed with Guardian Home Exchange and you can say whether you allow dogs or are happy to feed pets etc. We are currently arranging a swap and will feed their chickens. I can’t wait!

I'm not sure why that would be any more of a risk than with any other holiday. You go there with a suitcase and you come back with one, and you would have to be pretty unlucky to accidentally pack a cockroach. Plus the great majority of exchanges are with places in the US or western Europe.

People often swap their second/holiday homes which means that they can offer non-simultaneous swaps. We once swapped our Welsh farmhouse with some Germans who had an Austrian ski chalet; they had ours while we were camping in the UK in the summer but they gave us the choice of almost any week in the winter as they weren't using it much. It was fab!

I’m going to sound unsuited to the process with this question!..

Can you ask for no shoes on carpets? I’d hate to come back to mucky stairs. I’m not super house proud but hate shoes upstairs!

You can, although I personally wouldn't be too impressed if there was a long list of rules. But we always take shoes off when going upstairs, so...

You also have no way of enforcing that they do remove shoes! But the expectation is that they will leave the house clean (unless you specifically tell them not to, eg because you have a cleaner), so in theory of they left obvious marks on your carpet they should remove them before they go....

You can ask for what you want when you're negotiating a swap. As the PP said, you can't enforce too much, so make it reasonable or they may think you're taking the piss. If your stair carpets are beautiful and very pale, then they will probably follow a request to take shoes off (and for people from many countries that's the norm anyway). If your carpets turns out to be a bit grubby and they think you're being a bit Hyacinth Bucket about it, they may not be quite so scrupulous.

We had potential partners once who were vegan and wanted a promise that we wouldn't bring any animal-based foodstuffs into their house. We broke off negotiations with them before asking whether we had to leave our beef stock cubes in storage with our neighbours for the duration.

Sorry, I totally forgot about this!

Yes, exactly that. We might be staying with friends or relatives or staying in another HE home using GPs to pay.

We are on a house exchange this week. Our partners have arrived in our place and seem very happy. We asked a couple of questions to them by WhatsApp about where the switch for a particular light was, where to find the spare kitchen roll, and how to work the induction hob. Otherwise all is fine and we are enjoying driving round in their car, which is slightly nicer than ours.

I thought I'd post a couple of pics of the clothes hanging arrangements that we found. They have left us 40cm of rail space and a shelf. We left them a drawer and one of those external hanger rails. This is all perfectly fine and completely normal. You are always a little bit "camping out", especially for a 7-night exchange such as this is. You can see that the right-hand door is closed with a bit of twisted wire. We assume that's where the gimp suits live 😂. Again, this is all thoroughly normal.

We had hoped to meet our partners at their departure airport (they got on the plane that brought us to their country/town), but that didn't work out. They had planned to leave their car key at the information desk, but the people there refused. So they left the key on top of the front nearside wheel in the car park (this doesn't seem a huge risk, for a couple of hours) and set us a WhatsApp picture of the car so we could see where to head for,

They left us a bottle of wine. We normally do but forgot, so we pivoted to say that the bottle of white that we had in the fridge was for them. They also left us some chocolates. On the other hand we left them a nice little local craftwork souvenir. Swings and roundabouts. Nobody's keeping score.

They have a house, we have a flat. We did a slightly better job of cleaning before we left. It's all good. We will have a great week touring around <their location> and they will do the same where we live.

Can I ask where you are? We are about to do our first house swap in the Uk but it is interesting to see how an overseas swap goes. Thank you for posting.