House swapping: ‘How house dating saved me £20,000 on holiday’

Inviting a stranger to stay in your home may sound like the opposite of a relaxing vacation, but for some travelers a house exchange is worth the leap of faith.

“It’s like dating for houses,” Liz Barlow told me.

Aged 70, the semi-retired management consultant has 31 home swaps under his belt and estimates he has saved more than £20,000 by staying in other people’s homes for free.

She and her husband Evan Greenway, 72, first started converting their home in 2015 — but not without reservations.

Liz specifically remembers thinking: “Is someone going to wreck my house? Steal my stuff?

“It’s a big thing to start with, until you make it.”

Their first exchange took the couple to a detached bungalow in Australia before traveling to South Africa, where they stayed in a rock house filled with quirky wooden furniture.

But it’s a house in the middle of the Alaskan forest that Liz, from North Yorkshire, still dreams about.

“Sitting on the deck, looking out at the trees, it was just wonderful,” she says.

“We had two weeks, they had a heat wave.

“We went to the local state fair, the rodeo and, for my birthday, we went for a walk with the reindeer — it was great.”

For Liz and Ivan, switching homes means immersing yourself in someone else’s lifestyle, which can come with some unusual requests.

“When we lived in Alaska, [homeowner] Told us what she wanted us to save if there was an earthquake,” Liz recalled.

“It wasn’t her family pictures, it wasn’t her jewelry, it was her quilt.”

The home exchange idea dates back to the 1950s, when teachers began looking for cheap travel options during summer vacation, but for most it was the 2006 rom-com The Holiday that brought it to the public’s attention. I brought

It was the story of Cameron Diaz and Kate Winslet swapping homes for the festive season that inspired Rebecca Pyatt to take the leap while teaching in the Seychelles in 2017.

“It just gives you a taste of going on holiday but experiencing other people’s lives and culture,” says the 35-year-old.

“You can go to hotels in Paris and Rome but it’s a bit artificial and you don’t really get to experience what it’s like to live there.”

Rebecca experienced some of that Hollywood magic herself when she and her friends stayed in the same house used by cast members while filming the James Bond film Specter in Mexico.

“It was a huge house, right on the beach and had an infinity pool and its own chef,” says Rebecca, who lives in Honley, West Yorkshire.

“It was incredible. The master bedroom was absolutely huge and had a balcony and an open-plan bathroom, you could look out over the sea.”

Unlike Airbnb, she says the process to actually start an exchange is much slower, with a lot of time spent creating a profile.

“Once you stay on the platform longer, you get more offers,” she says.

“You can’t book just because someone has availability, everyone has the right to say no.”

Although she hasn’t had any negative experiences, Rebecca says there’s always the risk of a last-minute exchange falling through.

Websites like HomeExchange often help members with alternative exchanges or alternative accommodation if things don’t go as planned.

Like many other travel firms, the company has seen a boom in business since the end of the pandemic restrictions and now has 200,000 active members globally, of which 5,600 are based in the UK.

Public relations manager Jessica Poilucci said: “When travel came back we saw more and more people doing house swaps.

“The cost of living crisis and inflation have made travel seem unaffordable, and as we’ve seen a shift from travel being centric on Instagram to people wanting to experience places like locals do, house swapping is a great solution. Presented.”

For people like Liz and Rebecca, domestic exchanges are based on mutual trust and a “belief in the goodness of people.”

Rebecca says she’s not worried about theft or loss because “the benefits outweigh the risks”.

“The amount of money we save is probably more than what we would have to spend on repairs,” she says.

“I don’t have any particular sentimentality, it’s all materialistic, when it breaks it can be replaced.”

However, Charlotte Hindle, who runs a travel media firm in the North East South West with journalist Simon Calder, says home exchange is her “nightmare” idea.

“It’s really hard to invite someone into your home,” she says.

“I think it’s much better than Airbnb, it’s a separate room or property that you can control and you don’t have your personal stuff in it.”

To make the process smooth and safe, she advises people to take stock of household items and consider insurance policies and risks.

“You don’t want to be in a situation where you’re accused of taking something,” she says.

“If you didn’t know people, you’d have to look at all the checks and balances in terms of security.

“When was their boiler last serviced? Or when was their portable electric appliance tested (PAT)?”

“If it’s just your personal home, you can sometimes let those things slide.”

Unlike booking a hotel room with just a few clicks, home exchanges can be quite labor-intensive, according to photographer Kate Abbey.

“It involves a lot of work, like extra cleaning than you would normally do,” says Kate, who lives in Patele Bridge, near Ripon.

“When you go on vacation, you can just lock your door and leave your bed unmade.”

But, the 53-year-old says, compared to more traditional travel methods, domestic exchanges allow her family to move away from more specific vacation spots.

“Sometimes we go places we wouldn’t necessarily go because you’re limited in terms of choices,” she says.

“We went to a valley in the North York Moors, not far from where I live, and I’d never been and I wouldn’t have chosen it, but it was beautiful.”

Home exchanges may not be for everyone, but for avid swappers like Kate, Rebecca and Liz, they offer the chance to go on vacations they wouldn’t otherwise be able to afford.

“We saw brown bears fishing for salmon from a river in Alaska, we saw beluga whales in Hudson Bay in Canada,” says Liz.

“We’ve had some wonderful experiences.”

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