House Exchange as a way to travel affordability

[ysette9]

We are spending the summer in France this year and the long stay is made possible by house exchanges. The website I use allows for reciprocal exchanges as well as points-based exchanges. We are doing both- our first three weeks we’re staying at Family A’s house while they stayed at our house. Now we are staying at Family B’s house for points while Families C and D stay at our house.

The website is like a dating app for houses. There is a profile you create for you and your house, and a yearly membership fee to finalize an exchange. Browsing and chatting with others is free so you can window shop. This is our first time trying it out but my late text did a number of exchanges back in the day when they were still working, so the idea has been around for a while.

I won’t be so crass as to include my referral link here, but if anyone is interested, you can PM me. We are getting six weeks of lodging in France for $100, which isn’t bad at all.

[uniwelder]

Is this through homeexchange.com?  I don't think you actually mentioned the name of the particular site in your post?

What if you have pets or the house you're visiting does?  Are cases like that common or is this mostly a pet free exchange?

My wife and I have recently started using trustedhousesitters.com, which is geared mostly toward looking after other people's animals while they're gone or someone staying at your house while you're away, and most housesits come with pets.

[ysette9]

Is this through homeexchange.com?  I don't think you actually mentioned the name of the particular site in your post?

What if you have pets or the house you're visiting does?  Are cases like that common or is this mostly a pet free exchange?

My wife and I have recently started using trustedhousesitters.com, which is geared mostly toward looking after other people's animals while they're gone or someone staying at your house while you're away, and most housesits come with pets.

Yes, that is the website and you are correct that I hadn’t mentioned it specifically.

I’ve seen different things for pets and other animals. I haven’t really seen dogs, but I have seen houses that ask you to care for a cat. The house we are in at the moment has a pet rabbit. It doesn’t require much care but he is charming, and we have taken to hanging out with him and spoiling him with all sorts of fresh produce. You can also indicate if you need your houseplants or garden watered. I even saw a house with chickens. Whatever it is you just indicate what it is in your profile and discuss it in advance with the potential guests.

[Hula Hoop]

I'd thought of that as we live in a very touristy city in Italy so probably wouldn't have issues finding people.  But my husband is worried that crazy people might steal or destroy things or do stupid stuff (like flood the bathroom...)  Also our apartment is quite 'lived in' with 2 kids and ikea furniture.  It's not exactly magazine worthy. Would we still get takers?

[Metalcat]

I should look into this now that we have a second home in a bucket-list destination.

[Freedomin5]

How do you (or the website) deal with people stealing or ruining your stuff?

We let a friend of a friend stay at our cottage for one weekend, and they left rotting food in the fridge and accidentally broke a few things. Another family took all our pillows and cute decorative sofa cushions, broke a stool, and stole our brand-new vacuum cleaner.

What about families who use a buttload of electricity/water/gas? Like families who like to run the A/C at freezing cold temperatures all the time during the summer, regardless of whether they are home or out because they "want to come back to a cool home"?

Theoretically, I love the idea. I'm just having trouble seeing how it would work in the messiness of real life.

[Metalcat]

How do you (or the website) deal with people stealing or ruining your stuff?

We let a friend of a friend stay at our cottage for one weekend, and they left rotting food in the fridge and accidentally broke a few things. Another family took all our pillows and cute decorative sofa cushions, broke a stool, and stole our brand-new vacuum cleaner.

What about families who use a buttload of electricity/water/gas? Like families who like to run the A/C at freezing cold temperatures all the time during the summer, regardless of whether they are home or out because they "want to come back to a cool home"?

Theoretically, I love the idea. I'm just having trouble seeing how it would work in the messiness of real life.

Yep, you would have to expect it to be as messy as running an AirBnB. We set up our second home to be an AirBnB, but decided against it because we plan to use it too much.

But yeah, there can be major consequences to letting people use your space and stuff.

[Freedomin5]

Out of curiosity, I checked out the website. They only let you deduct a max. of USD$100 per damage if the damage is accidental. So if a guest's kid accidentally whips a ball in the house and breaks my window, which cost $500 to replace, I'm only allowed to charge the guest $100. And if the guest does not agree to my request to withhold a part of the deposit, then I get $0 for 30 days, during which we attempt to reach an agreement, and if we can't reach an agreement, then I get $0 "until an agreement is reached" with no indication of how long that would take.

It also says nothing about potentially excessive utilities usage.

[uniwelder]

We let a friend of a friend stay at our cottage for one weekend, and they left rotting food in the fridge and accidentally broke a few things. Another family took all our pillows and cute decorative sofa cushions, broke a stool, and stole our brand-new vacuum cleaner.

Was this all in the same weekend?  What became of this family and your missing/broken stuff?

[Freedomin5]

We let a friend of a friend stay at our cottage for one weekend, and they left rotting food in the fridge and accidentally broke a few things. Another family took all our pillows and cute decorative sofa cushions, broke a stool, and stole our brand-new vacuum cleaner.

Was this all in the same weekend?  What became of this family and your missing/broken stuff?

Different weeks/weekends.

We confronted the friend of the friend, and looped our friend into the conversation. The friend of the friend was super defensive and aggressive and made a bunch of excuses and dismissive of our concerns. Our friend was super apologetic and embarrassed.

The other stuff was all stolen by the same family. We didn't know this family as they were "vetted" by our rental management company. The rental management company basically hadn't done an initial inventory, so then it became our word against their word. Initially, the rental management company didn't want to chase the guests down for reimbursement, instead suggesting that the items we claimed were missing had never been in the cottage in the first place. Luckily, we were able to produce a receipt for the recently purchased vacuum cleaner (the guests had left the brand new box in which the vacuum came), and the items that were missing were actually in the photos that the rental management company had taken to market our cottage. So then they had to admit that those items were indeed in the cottage when they initially came around to take photos of the place.

We fired the rental management company and now only let our friends use the cottage.

[Hula Hoop]

My husband used to work in hospitality and he has sooo many stories.  People often seem normal but once they get drunk...

[ysette9]

I'd thought of that as we live in a very touristy city in Italy so probably wouldn't have issues finding people.  But my husband is worried that crazy people might steal or destroy things or do stupid stuff (like flood the bathroom...)  Also our apartment is quite 'lived in' with 2 kids and ikea furniture.  It's not exactly magazine worthy. Would we still get takers?

Absolutely! The point is to be more like a home and not like a perfect Airbnb. As long as you are clear and communicate what your house is like, it usually is fine. If people want something fancier they can just move on to another listing. Part of the charm people talk about is living in someone’s real home and experiencing how people live in different parts of the world.

As an example, our kitchen looks like crap right now with literal holes in the walls as we are about to start on a remodel project after the summer. I was up front about this and people were fine with it. In fact the place we are in at the moment has its own unfinished remodel stuff going on.

Personally we like the places where kids live because it is more fun for our kids to play with someone else’s toys. It is also helpful to have a place that has already been somewhat childproofed, has a high chair, etc.

[ysette9]

How do you (or the website) deal with people stealing or ruining your stuff?

We let a friend of a friend stay at our cottage for one weekend, and they left rotting food in the fridge and accidentally broke a few things. Another family took all our pillows and cute decorative sofa cushions, broke a stool, and stole our brand-new vacuum cleaner.

What about families who use a buttload of electricity/water/gas? Like families who like to run the A/C at freezing cold temperatures all the time during the summer, regardless of whether they are home or out because they "want to come back to a cool home"?

Theoretically, I love the idea. I'm just having trouble seeing how it would work in the messiness of real life.

I think there is some risk there, of course. You are operating on a trust platform to some extent. Going through the website offers some insurance. I can’t speak to details because I haven’t read the fine print. Each person has a profile and for more experienced exchangers you can read reviews others have left. You can chat with the people before hand and even do video chats to get to know each other in advance. You can set expectations as well as deal with things in real time. I am in contact with all the exchangers to answer their questions about my house or ask ones of the people who own the house I am in.

My parents did an exchange where my father got a speeding ticket driving the host’s car. The same host got a parking ticket in San Francisco while on their end of the exchange. They discussed it after and decided to just call it even, each paying the bill sent to their respective house.

[clarkfan1979]

How do you (or the website) deal with people stealing or ruining your stuff?

We let a friend of a friend stay at our cottage for one weekend, and they left rotting food in the fridge and accidentally broke a few things. Another family took all our pillows and cute decorative sofa cushions, broke a stool, and stole our brand-new vacuum cleaner.

What about families who use a buttload of electricity/water/gas? Like families who like to run the A/C at freezing cold temperatures all the time during the summer, regardless of whether they are home or out because they "want to come back to a cool home"?

Theoretically, I love the idea. I'm just having trouble seeing how it would work in the messiness of real life.

If you create a profile on homeexhange.com, airbnb.com or vrbo.com people are interested in maintaining their high score as a guest. They have something to lose. I would be more fearful of renting to family and/or friends.

[Nikita]

A bit late, but wanted to share my experience. I did a month-long exchange between a major US city and a pretty touristy place in Italy. Overall, it worked out really well. The family I exchanged with was very nice and we ended up being friendly even after the exchange.

However, a few things to keep in mind:
-- Home exchange platforms are not as sophisticated as Airbnb etc. They are literally mom-and-pop shops run in a pretty relaxed way. Which means that if things go well, you'll most likely have a good time. But if something goes wrong, you should assume that you'll be on your own. If you are fine with that, feel free to give it a try.

-- Availability of homes on these exchange sites is pretty limited. You can just assume that you'll either have to get lucky, or you'd have to go somewhere not exactly where you're looking to go to, or there's going to be some sort of a balance of inconveniences. It's not exactly like a hotel but for free most of the time -- it requires work.

-- The amount of work that goes into arranging one is arguably more than the value you're getting out of it. You'll have to get on a few calls with the exchange partners, you'll have to clean your place twice and theirs at least once, you'll have to coordinate your travel plans, etc. It's not worth it for exchanges of under a month. And most likely, not worth it for even under 2-3 months.

-- You're stuck in one place for a long period of time. If that's what you want -- it's totally fine to take it slow. But important to keep in mind, depending on what kind of travel you're going for.

-- If you are in a major city or anywhere near a major attraction, you'll have an easier time finding exchanges. If you're anywhere else -- you'll probably not get much traction on these platforms other than some lucky coincidences

The thing is that, if you're from the US or Canada, most of the world is relatively cheap. So most of the time, the cost and convenience of just renting is not going to be that much more differently priced anyway if you take into the account the time, stress, and risks of arranging the exchange. For example, in my case I could have probably rented a place or two in Italy for ~$1,000 in that general area for a month and not had to worry about the implicit costs of exchanging. Some people might argue that it's not mustachian not to try to squeeze that $1k out of the situation, but I'd argue that meaningful time, stress, and risk management is fully justifiable here and worth considering.

[ysette9]

Interesting that your experiences seem to weigh so much on the side of headaches. I agree with you that it is more work than just booking a hotel, but I didn’t find it to be nearly as much trouble as your experiences have been. I enjoyed making the connection with the first lady we exchanged with. That additional personal connexion and insight was an added pleasure to the cultural connection. You do want to put in the time to make sure the communication is extra clear on expectations on each side. People can have different standards for cleanliness, for example.

I just booked a points-based exchange for a place in northern England this summer to visit my family. As a small town I got lucky as it was the only place available for exchange. I will have to fill in some dates with an Airbnb since it wasn’t available for my entire stay, but saving £1500 is awesome.

[clarkfan1979]

I was part of a facebook group that was focused on home exchanges in Hawaii. Someone on Maui contacted me and wanted to swap houses with my Kauai house for one week in summer 2021. We chatted via facebook messenger for about one week. We came to an agreement that both houses were similar value and we agreed on some dates. At the very end, I get the message, "Great, now I just need to contact my landlord to ask if he will let me do this."

I cancelled the deal because I'm not swapping with someone who is renting. In my personal opinion, the risk is not the same. It ended up being a waste of time and I don't engage in those conversations anymore.