I know this is unusual! If you'd like to skip the lengthy explanation of why I'm looking for this, feel free to read just the section after the stars!
This is my situation:
I live in a flat that I own. I love it and love the location, but a year ago an airport started doing night flights over the house. They are not very loud - the people in the other flats in the house are not woken by them, and I think they'd be unlikely to bother most people, but I'm an incredibly light sleeper and am woken by them nearly every night. I usually don't get back to sleep. As a result, I'm extremely sleep-deprived.
I've tried all types of earplugs, a white noise machine, noise-cancelling headphones, listening to relaxation cds before going to sleep, etc. etc.
One option would obviously be to sell my flat and buy a different one, but I'm reluctant to do that because:
a) As mentioned, I love the flat and the location. I have also put lots of work into renovating the flat and fixing problems with it.
b) At the moment I have a serious illness, which is causing me to sleep lightly. I'm hopeful that when my health improves I will be able sleep through the aeroplanes. However, for my health to improve, I need to be somewhere where I can get enough sleep.
c) Selling my flat and buying another would be a huge amount of hassle, and what with the illness and the sleep deprivation, I really can't see how I would have the energy for it.
d) There would be no guarantee that I would get enough sleep in a different flat - there might be a neighbour who snores really loudly, or a nearby baby who cries at night, etc.
Letting my flat and using the rental income to rent somewhere else is not an option. That is because I'm off work ill and receiving sickness benefit, and apparently the sickness benefit would stop in that situation. That would obviously leave me with no money to live on.
I enquired about whether my sickness benefit would remain in place if I did a flat swap with someone else, with no money changing hands, and was told "it would be looked at on a case by case basis". Given that I would not be in any way benefitting financially - I would be doing it just to get more sleep and thereby hopefully recover from illness and get back to work - I'm hopeful that it would be allowed.
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For this reason, I'd like to find someone who would be interested in doing a temporary flat swap. The idea would be for the arrangement to last as long as I and the other person wanted it to - as soon as either of us wanted it to end, it would. I realize this is a long shot - maybe no one will want to, as people are settled in their own places.
At the same time, my flat is in an amazing location - about 300 metres from a beach, with a sea view, in a central but quiet location in a great town, in a pretty street, with nearby green spaces. The flat has big windows, lots of light, and is, in my opinion, very nicely renovated. I wonder whether someone in a less good property or location might be interested in swapping!
I've asked around locally and so far not heard of anyone. I've looked on gumtree but all the property swaps advertised on there are for council properties. I've looked on house swapping websites but the ones I've seen are for people looking for short-term swaps, for holidays. In any case, I'd want to swap with someone local, not someone in another country, as my support network is here. Where else would you look?!