Home-swapping seemed like a smart way to save money and travel. Here's how we got on
Jennifer Sheahan tried a home-swap experience when travelling through France and Spain during September.
I had been thinking about home exchanges for years. Hotels are lovely for the right occasion, but often they’re expensive and impersonal. Airbnb has lost much of its charm for me in recent years.
Home swapping seemed a smart way to save money, but also felt more like a cultural exchange than a transaction.
We're just home from a few weeks spent travelling around France and Spain in my mini-campervan. It’s a tiny van with a bed barely wider than a single, which was fine for most of the trip, but by the time we reached San Sebastián — the final leg of our adventure — we knew we’d be ready for a real bed.
We're also ready to share advice on how our house-swap experience worked out.
There are plenty of options available, including Home Exchange, Kindred, Home4Home, Intervac, and more. All have their relative merits and are worth looking into, but I chose the platform Home Exchange for a few reasons.
Home Exchange has been around a long time, and the community feels well-established and trusted.
You can either do reciprocal swaps or host guests in exchange for points that you can use to stay in other homes. The reviews online were reassuring, but what really convinced me was a friend’s referral. They had been swapping homes for years and had nothing but positive stories. That, combined with the sense that it felt more about community than commerce, sealed the deal for me. So far, the experience has been excellent.
Preparing the house for strangers to stay in was actually quite fun. We put together a home manual with instructions for everything from how to use the hob and the heating system to where to take the bins out when leaving. We made a Google Maps list of our favourite neighbourhood spots — cafés, pubs, and restaurants with some notes saying what we loved about them.
I got a fantastic tip from a colleague who had been doing home exchanges for years to buy cardboard gift tags and use them to leave helpful notes around the house; for instance, “no shoes upstairs, please", or “coffee and tea in here, help yourself”.
To keep things clean and practical, I bought a mattress protector, fresh sheets, and clean towels. We installed wardrobe locks on one wardrobe so we could put away anything valuable (which is not much in my case — if you have a spare room, you could also choose to lock things away in here).
We left a few free hangers in another wardrobe for our guests. On the day we left, we cleaned top to bottom, stocked the fridge with bread, milk, and cheese, and left a handwritten welcome note.
While we were away, we hosted two sets of guests in our home, and the experience was overwhelmingly positive. The first was a delightful Icelandic artist and musician. The key, I’ve learned, as with anything, is good communication. He let us know well in advance when he’d be arriving, and checked in regularly.
He changed the sheets and put out clean towels for the next guests. He even changed a lightbulb for us, and left us the most beautiful little painting and a handwritten thank-you note. Our second guests, a lovely Spanish couple, left us a gorgeous bottle of Spanish wine and a lovely note, too.
Coming home to these, and a spotless home that had been enjoyed while we were away, gave me an unexpectedly warm feeling. I have never rented my home on Airbnb or any other platform but I like the feeling that, instead of tenants, who pay and thus have a level of entitlement, we had fellow travellers who treated our home with care and respect.
The structure of Home Exchange is reassuring to me, though all platforms have their own layers of security, so choose one that feels best to you. There’s an upfront annual fee to join (around €175; sign up to their newsletter, as they sometimes share discounts), which means people don’t sign up on a whim — they’re invested. ID verification and address checks via utility bills add an extra layer of security, and Home Exchange holds a €500 deposit in case anything is damaged.
After each stay, both hosts and guests leave reviews across three categories — politeness, communication, and cleanliness — so you build up a reputation within the community.
Knowing all of this was in place made it much easier to hand over the keys. The keys were left with a neighbour, who kindly let our guests in and showed them around, then collected the keys when they left and gave the house a once-over for our peace of mind. Good neighbours are invaluable.
Home swapping isn’t for everyone, and that’s fine. It’s perfect for people who enjoy the idea of community, who want to travel like a local rather than just as a tourist.
Travel so often feels anonymous these days, but home swapping feels richer and more personal. Some flexibility is required — it works best if you’re open to discovering new places, and your dream swap might not be in the exact location or week you imagined. And of course, cost-wise, it’s a no-brainer compared to hotels or holiday rentals.
In San Sebastián, we stayed in a charming apartment right by the beach in Gros. Our host gave us a warm welcome and shared all her favourite local pintxos bars, restaurants, and coffee spots.
She chatted with us on WhatsApp during our stay, answering any questions and giving us tips for things to do in the area, all of which hugely enhanced our visit.
I’m certainly a convert.
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