Swapping Your Home for a Vacation? What You Need to Know

Would you let a stranger vacation in your home if you got free lodging in return?

A free stay in someone else’s home, long a budget-friendly way to travel, has become more appealing as costs rise and travelers seek out local vibes.

Home-swapping platform People Like Us has more than 10,300 homes listed on its site. Chief Executive Drew Seitam says, by the end of June, members had completed or arranged for 30% more swaps than in all of 2023. Another platform, HomeExchange, has more than 175,000 members, a number it says has grown 17% this year.

Home-swap platforms like these charge annual membership fees north of $100. Swaps also happen more informally in Facebook groups and between friends. Travellers can do a simultaneous swap, where they travel during the same dates, but can also plan to host each other at different times.

While home exchanges can save travellers thousands on lodging, they aren’t for everyone. Home swappers give the following tips to consider before listing your home.

Get a read on the situation

The person you are swapping with shouldn’t feel like a stranger by the time you arrive, home exchangers say.

Barbara Osterwisch , 66 years old, and her husband, both retirees, have swapped their home in Houston and their cabin in Texas’ Hill Country for stays in the Netherlands, France, Canada, Austria and California. They video chat with potential matches to establish rapport, and to give tours of their homes. Many exchangers begin planning their swaps months, if not years, in advance. This gives ample time for getting to know one another, Osterwisch says.

Apprehensive travellers should consider a swap within a few hours’ drive as a trial run, rather than jumping into an exchange in another country, she says.

Home swaps aren’t for tourists who like everything just so, travelers say. Unlike a short-term rental, home swaps are more likely to be people’s primary residences. People leave clothes in the closets, tools in the garage and photos on the walls. Living in someone’s home is part of the charm, but it isn’t the same as staying in a hotel with a front desk and staff to fix issues that arise.

Using a platform can ensure some safety and quality guarantees, swappers say. Some companies, such as Kindred, a members-only platform, offer 24/7 text support for problems.

Osterwisch says she and her husband have stayed in touch with the families they swapped with and now have connections all over the world.

Check your insurance policy

Some travelers use membership-based services to provide supplemental insurance or support if things go wrong.

Oleg Pynda is a 31-year-old New York City tech worker who has swapped with travellers from France. He says, based on his experience, U.S. travellers tend to worry more about strangers staying in their homes and damaging their belongings. Most of the initial messages he gets from U.S.-based travellers emphasise their trustworthiness, while European travelers focus on the quality of the home they are offering to exchange.

Pynda says he is comfortable with people staying in his apartment for a short time, so he doesn’t feel compelled to sign up for services that provide extra insurance for members. The people he swaps with end up becoming familiar to him and don’t feel like complete strangers.

He says his lease prohibits situations with a monetary exchange, such as a short-term rental or sublet, but not home exchanges.

Homeowners and renters-insurance policies might limit the number of days a guest can stay in your home during a swap, says Janet Ruiz of the Insurance Information Institute. They might also limit compensation for damage done to hosts’ and visitors’ possessions while people are in your home.

“People don’t want to tell their insurance agents what they are doing,” she says. Having a conversation with the agent before anything happens can help you make informed choices about coverage, she adds, including whether to buy a supplemental policy for vacation-rental coverage.

Travelers should also ensure the home they are staying in has coverage. And renters ought to check their leases before entering into a swap.

Some swappers let travellers borrow their cars. Ruiz recommends first asking the person you’re exchanging with about their driver’s licenses and insurance coverage.

Shawn and Bill Personke , from Michigan, had a potential swap fall through because the other family wanted to use their car. They had promised it to someone else while they were away.

Some travelers say they lock valuables in one room of the house or put them in the trunks of their cars and take the keys with them. Problems can arise, but none of the travellers interviewed had any horror stories to share.

“My only regret regarding home exchanging is not figuring it out sooner,” Osterwisch says.

Travel somewhere new

Marina Wanders , a photographer, lives in a suburb of Austin, Texas. She floated the idea of a summer house swap in a Facebook group. A Dallas woman, whose home has a backyard swimming pool and a shower with a chandelier in it, responded and said she was game. Wanders says Dallas isn’t her ideal vacation destination, but as a 29-year-old single mom of two, she looks for affordable travel alternatives.

“I’m like a middle-class American single mom and make enough to pay my bills and buy $40 shampoo, but I do not have a chandelier in my shower,” Wanders says.

She decided to go for the swap because she can give her sons a memorable vacation in a beautiful home while saving thousands on lodging. The Dallas family will stay in her home during the same dates.

Travelers with flexible dates and locations will have more options. The Personkes once scored a swap in Angers, France, on their preferred dates.

People who live in major cities have more luck requesting specific dates because their locations are in demand, but travelers like the Personkes, who live in a small city outside of Detroit, often need to work harder marketing their homes and communities. The Personkes’ swappers have experienced their town’s local parade and nearby nature trails.

The retirees have swapped as part of People Like Us and HomeLink. They also use the People Like Us Facebook group to speak with other travellers, get advice and suss out exchanges.

They say they love living like locals, getting baguettes from vending machines in remote French towns and joining neighbours for dinner.

“Sometimes we are the first Americans people are ever going to meet, and I want to make a good impression,” Shawn says.

Many luxury hotels only build on their gilded reputations with each passing decade. But others are less fortunate. Here are five long-gone grandes dames that fell from grace—and one that persists, but in a significantly diminished form.

The Proto-Marmont |

The Garden of Allah, Los Angeles

A magnet for celebrities, the Garden of Allah was once the scene-making equivalent of today’s Chateau Marmont. Frank Sinatra and Ava Gardner’s affair allegedly started there and Humphrey Bogart lived in one of its bungalows for a time.

Crimean expat Alla Nazimova leased a grand home in Hollywood after World War I, but soon turned it into a hotel, where she prioritised glamorous clientele. Others risked being ejected by guards and a fearsome dog dubbed the Hound of the Baskervilles. Demolished in the 1950s, the site’s now a parking lot.

The Failed Follow-Up |

Hotel Astor, New York City

The Astor family hoped to repeat their success when they opened this sequel to their megahit Waldorf Astoria hotel in 1904. It became an anchor of the nascent Theater District, buzzy (and naughty) enough to inspire Cole Porter to write in “High Society”: “Have you heard that Mimsie Starr…got pinched in the Astor Bar?”

That bar soon gained another reputation. “Gentlemen who preferred the company of other gentlemen would meet in a certain section of the bar,” said travel expert Henry Harteveldt of consulting firm Atmosphere Research. By the 1960s, the hotel had lost its lustre and was demolished; the 54-storey One Astor Plaza skyscraper was built in its place.

The Island Playground |

Santa Carolina Hotel, Bazaruto Archipelago, Mozambique

In the 1950s, colonial officers around Africa treated Mozambique as an off-duty playground. They flocked, in particular, to the Santa Carolina, a five-star hotel on a gorgeous archipelago off the country’s southern coast.

Run by a Portuguese businessman and his wife, the resort included an airstrip that ferried visitors in and out. Ask locals why the place was eventually reduced to rubble, and some whisper that the couple were cursed—and that’s why no one wanted to take over when the business collapsed in the ’70s. Today, seeing the abandoned, crumbled ruins and murals bleached by the sun, it’s hard to dismiss their superstitions entirely.

The Tourism Gimmick |

Bali Hai Raiatea, French Polynesia

The overwater bungalow, a shorthand for barefoot luxury around the world, began in French Polynesia—but not with the locals. Instead, it was a marketing gimmick cooked up by a trio of rascally Americans. They moved to French Polynesia in the late 1950s, and soon tried to capitalise on the newly built international airport and a looming tourism boom.

That proved difficult because their five-room hotel on the island of Raiatea lacked a beach. They devised a fix: building rooms on pontoons above the water. They were an instant phenomenon, spreading around the islands and the world—per fan site OverwaterBungalows.net , there are now more than 9,000 worldwide, from the Maldives to Mexico. That first property, though, is no more.

The New England Holdout |

Poland Springs Resort, Poland, Maine

The Ricker family started out as innkeepers, running a stagecoach stop in Maine in the 1790s. When Hiram Ricker took over the operation, the family expanded into the business by which it would make its fortune: water. Thanks to savvy marketing, by the 1870s, doctors were prescribing Poland Spring mineral water and die-hards were making pilgrimages to the source.

The Rickers opened the Poland Spring House in 1876, and eventually expanded it to include one of the earliest resort-based golf courses in the country, a barber shop, dance studio and music hall. By the turn of the century, it was among the most glamorous resort complexes in New England.

Mismanagement eventually forced its sale in 1962, and both the water operation and hospitality holdings went through several owners and operators. While the water venture retains its prominence, the hotel has weathered less well, becoming a pleasant—but far from luxurious—mid-market resort. Former NYU hospitality professor Bjorn Hanson says attempts at upgrading over the decades have been futile. “I was a consultant to a developer in the 1970s to return the resort to its ‘former glory,’ but it never happened.”