Home Exchange: Holidays/Vacations, Permanent, Council/Private Homes, New Build for Old, Crafts

As many people looking for information on home exchange (holidays/vacations) use the Internet to do their research, it's probably a little confusing to find quite a mixture of unrelated sites in search results and ads. As the same terms (home exchange, house swap, etc) are used for a number of different purposes, I thought it might be useful to list some of the main types of service you might come across:

1. Swapping homes for temporary periods, usually at the same time and usually for holidays (vacations). As 'home exchange' has been used to describe this type of service for at least 60 years, this is still what is most commonly associated with the phrases, 'home exchange', 'house swap' (and variations) - and is what this blog (and Home Base Holidays) is all about.

2. Swapping council houses (property owned by and rented from local authorities) or privately owned homes permanently. This is a common practice in the UK and a number of sites cater for both types of exchange.

3. Part exchange an old property for a newly built home. This is an incentive that house builders sometimes use to encourage sales of new homes.

4. Permanent swap of homes rather than selling. This seems to have become very popular in the USA especially due to the slow down in the housing market. A number of sites have sprung up to offer this service recently, to match people who want to sell their homes but are unable to find buyers with others in the same situation.

5. House swap (referrences on arts and crafts sites). This is one I've come across a few times but I'm not sure I fully understand it. Is it the swapping of any craft item? Collages or cards? House themed craft swaps? Can anyone enlighten me?

Comments

[Shaws holidays]

A holiday from home is also possible without having to expose your own home! family cottages and caravans for rent in the north of Wales on my website.

[Lois]

Shaws holidays - I have published your comment with the link to your site intact to give your holiday rentals site a little publicity (hope you will do the same for our home exchange service!) but definitely have to disagree with your suggestion that home exchangers in some way 'expose their homes to risk'. In fact, insurance companies generally are happier knowing that a home is occupied by exchange guests as a lived in home is much less at risk of break-ins than a home left empty for possibly weeks while the owners are on holiday!

[Really Traveling]

I too found that I had to fight my way through council house exchanges in the search results to get to holiday exchanges...
You are providing some excellent information here, I will certainly be back for more...

[Lois]

Hi 'Really Traveling'

Thanks for your comment. It does seem really confusing to have terms like 'home exchange' used for such different types of swaps. We get the odd call from people wanting to permanently exchange their council flats and sometimes it takes a little time to realise that this is the case. When I take such a call, I try to point them in the right direction but, not having any personal knowledge of the many sites providing this service, I wouldn't want to recommend a particular one, except to steer them away from free services as these are more apt to have a lot of time wasters listed.