Posted: Sun Mar 31, 2024 11:21am
Not exactly house swap, we did use a ‘Trusted Housesitter’ from the website of the same name.
The guy all but wrecked our house, I left him a show home standard house and came back to filth, we were gone three months.
The bath was almost gritty, it was so dirty, he had hair dye sprayed onto walls and doors, he broke the gas hob and washing machine door. My plants were floating in water that had overflowed onto the floor. The place was thick with dust. He bleached my good bath towels and left his dirty bed linen for good measure, very dirty, I doubt he ever changed the sheets in three months. He even damaged the smoke alarm that he complained was faulty… it wasn’t and we still have it, except now it’s dented from him bashing it. So expect he was burning a lot of things, he did ‘replace’ one pan that he said ‘went faulty on him’ assume he burned the backside out of it.’ The filters were left thick with grease and I don’t cook with oil.
He also stole a blender cup to use as a water bottle I assume, as he never left our house in three months and had everything delivered - where he made laughable cooking videos and Instagram pictures from our house.
He was a fantasy figure, pathetic really and maybe someone I’d have felt sorry for, under different circumstances
Check every single review, this guy had plenty of them and was simply a great liar, spending months at a time ‘looking after’ other people’s houses for free.
He was so nice before he arrived and turned into a monster.
The website advertise that they vet members and their insurance turned out to be a waste of time and they wouldn’t even remove the guy, only warn him to do better.
Swapping might work out better, as they obviously have skin in the game too, but don’t fall for a well practiced liar like we did.
The guy cleared off before we arrived home, by a few hours, changed his SIM when he got into the first train and tried to block us on his social media channels, but we found him and the content he had filmed in our house anyway - I’d explicitly told him I wasn’t okay with that before we left.
Just be very picky about who you swap with and clear about your expectations. I expected to get my house back in the condition we left it in, we needed to repaint, deep clean and have appliances repaired.
We were left feeling we would rather have chanced leaving it empty for three months.
I know other people have great experiences, but I’d be very wary.