House swapping for holidays

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. 

It’s something I’m also interested in. I think if it’s a house swap you would hope both parties are mutually respectful of the house they stay in. You would hope so… It seems like a good way to discover new places. 

Hi I have a friend who does this every summer to get away from the heat. 

She is very happy with the arrangement. 

She has done the swap with 3 different couples & stayed in 3 different parts of UK. 

She has a friend to clean in between people, & to wash bedding & towels. It's also a way to check on the place & a point of contact for guests. 

Hope that helps 

 I haven’t experience of holiday home swap but have done 5 home exchanges over the years. In all cases, our house was intact and clean after we got back. In only one instance the house we went to was not as clean as we would have liked when we got there, we just rolled up our sleeves and spent our first few hours to get it right. I think it is important to exchange with people at a similar stage as yourself. We were younger with children then, so it was great to go to a house with toys and books. If I was doing it now I would only exchange with childless or retired couples, and no pets either. As another reply points out, the other party is hoping you will look after their holiday home too.

We have been using homeexchange for a few months and have found it to be excellent.  You can do a direct swap or a points swap.The website charge £180 per year. The points swap is where you mant to go to their house but they doint want to come to yours so you pay them points and they use those points to go elsewhere. We are just back from a two month world trip and as well as using hotels, got a direct swap with someone in Hawaii and a points swap in Christchurch  New Zealand. We have a family coming to our place in Moraira in May for a week for points. One of the places we went could have been a bit cleaner, so your swaps are not without risk but the other place was spotless. And our place was left in a state bad enough for our cleaners to take photos to send to me. We rent our place out in the summer so have the set up already in place for the swaps without us having to clean ourselves. With rentals, people leave the place pretty good usually because they run the risk of not getting their deposit back, with homeexchange there's no deposit to lose and I'm not about to start leaving bad reviews and create bad feeling. That's my experience so far, it saved us a fair amount of money and it's like getting a free(ish) airbnb.

Do you have a website or anything that they use?

Thanks for the recommendation :)

There is a recently formed group  via Ladies of Spain, think it’s called LOS house swap/ house sitters, who as well as house swap they also do house sitter for animals., looks interesting, will be look8ng into it more in Sept.