In Praise of Home Swapping

When my husband, Adam, first floated the idea, it carried the risqué air of an indecent proposal. “You want us to swap…homes?” I asked. “With strangers?”

While my overactive imagination conjured up visions of 1970s key parties (with real estate subbing in for spouses, obvs), the reality turned out to be a more respectable, if still novel, twist on the sharing economy. A friend had recommended a platform called LoveHomeSwap (since acquired by HomeExchange), which offered homeowners a marketplace where they could list their home and accumulate points for every guest stay — points that could then be used as currency to stay in someone else’s home. While it was possible to organize a direct or “classic” swap (meaning you both swoon over each other’s homes and have calendars that sync up; swiping right, if you will), that wasn’t required. You could arrange an asynchronous swap with the same host, or simply cash in your points to stay in someone else’s home without them ever coming to yours.

The freedom this setup promised was certainly alluring — but maybe too casual? Much like with dating, one person’s normal can be another’s nightmare. What if the host decided to drop by unexpectedly (it’s their home, after all)? What if we encountered a hoarder-style situation cannily absent from the photos, or a surprise guest in residence? (I’m still recovering from a vacation rental experience that came with a lonely and sweet, yet unannounced, dog living in the yard.)

Other misgivings swirled. Without the security of an Airbnb-style contract — traditionally with home swaps, no money changes hands — would there be less incentive for hosts to keep their places up to scratch? Would it be weird staying in someone’s primary residence, rather than a vacation home designed to accommodate travelers? How difficult would it be to find homes on the exact dates and in the exact places we wanted?

The answers: thankfully, no; yes, but that’s actually a huge part of the appeal; and it depends.

We found ourselves stepping briefly but memorably into the lives of two strangers who resided in the platonic ideal of a Parisian pied-à-terre

On our very first swap we hit the jackpot. After sending out countless queries, the stars aligned and we found a couple whose primary digs were in Paris and who fancied visiting Mérida, Mexico — where we years ago established our dream home, an 1850s Spanish Colonial casa with handmade tile floors, lush gardens, and a frangipani-shaded pool. Even better, their dates worked for our calendar the following winter.

Which is how we found ourselves stepping briefly but memorably into the lives of two strangers who resided in the platonic ideal of a Parisian pied-à-terre. Situated in the Latin Quarter, a baguette-under-the-arm stroll from onetime Hemingway haunt Rue Mouffetard, the apartment felt like an intimate art gallery, filled with stylish objets and striking contemporary African paintings. There were two luxurious bathrooms and a leafy balcony perfect for sipping aperitifs while watching the sun set behind a mosaic of mansard roofs. Paris was at our doorstep but we kept finding excuses to stay home.

This was seven years ago. Since then, we’ve done around a dozen swaps, each sublime in its own way. A slender, three-story town house in Venice’s artsy-cool Dorsoduro neighborhood was a perfect (if quirkily decorated) home base from which to explore that year’s Biennale. A compact bedsit in London plonked us in one of our favorite neighborhoods, Shoreditch, where we strolled along canals, cozied up in atmospheric pubs, and browsed the fragrant Columbia Road Flower Market. In the Cotswolds, we scored a luxurious retreat whose owners demonstrated a flair for color and texture the Missoni family would envy and whose glorious lap pool the weather miraculously allowed us to use. A spacious condo in Manly, just outside Sydney, was handily situated between two preposterously beautiful beaches. And there was the 14th-century castle in the South of France where we spent a dreamy summer week with friends, indulging in twilight feasts under an ancient oak tree, playing lazy games of pétanque, meditating on terraces overlooking oceans of nodding sunflowers, and watching old movies in the musty but wonderful home cinema we found hidden in the stone guardhouse.

There have also been myriad small kindnesses and welcoming gestures: in Amsterdam, the loyalty card for the café downstairs, loaded with free coffees; in Austria’s outrageously scenic Carinthia region, discounts at the mountainside spa complex across the street (15 subtly different types of saunas!); the car our hosts offered us for shuttling between their homes in San Francisco and Lake Tahoe. In return, we’ve watered plants, fed goldfish, and signed for packages, just as we would if house-sitting for a friend.

On asking around, I discovered I wasn’t the only home swap aficionado in town. New York–based writer Gina Hamadey joined the design-oriented, invitation-only home swapping platform Behomm in 2022 after emerging from the pandemic desperate to travel again and horrified at the stratospheric price of hotels. A friend raved about her experiences using the platform, and soon enough Gina was arranging an asynchronous swap with a family in Amsterdam. The home turned out to be in the less-visited southern part of the city — it had chickens that her blissed-out kids, then 7 and 10, enjoyed feeding — where the family took bike rides along the river.

We’ve had similar happy surprises in places we’d never have thought to book otherwise. One constant: Every home we’ve stayed in has retained vestiges of the owners, whether party dresses hanging in a closet, family photos, or boxes of someone’s favorite pickles stacked in the pantry. Your mileage may vary on whether you find such phantom threads endearing or icky; we long ago decided that idiosyncratic beats generic. Certainly the complaint about vacation rentals hewing to a hauntingly homogenous aesthetic (The Verge dubbed it “AirSpace”) is far less likely to be true of home swaps. We’ve yet to encounter a home whose design feels corporate or focus-group-tested.

Hamadey agrees that the sense of intimacy and connection is what makes swaps special. When guests stay at her three-bedroom Brooklyn apartment, she clears space for them to store clothing, but otherwise retains her home’s gorgeously curated but lived-in vibe. She also leaves a book full of recommendations — not just her family’s favorite local restaurant but their favorite dish there.

Another Behomm member, Alicia, who also works in the New York media world (and whose name has been changed to protect her from her co-op board), says it has revolutionized the way she travels. “I love the goodwill it creates,” she says. “You put yourself into somebody else’s life, and in turn, you share the joy of your own city, your neighborhood, which multiplies the joy of where you are.” Having grown up in the former East Germany, where hotels were nonexistent and travel was limited to exchanges with friends and family, she finds home swapping both natural and charmingly unpredictable. “We’re not following a checklist,” she says. “Someone reaches out to you from a place you’d never thought about visiting. There’s a beautiful sense of discovery.”

Although my own conversion from home swap skeptic to evangelist is complete, I’ve absorbed some lessons along the way. Having flexibility when it comes to dates, locales, and season — and being prepared to do exhaustive research and reach out to a lot of hosts — is essential to finding a perfect match. Joining a smaller, more tailored community (such as Behomm or HomeExchange Collection, that brand’s more exclusive tier) is more likely to lead to swaps with simpatico standards and design aesthetics. If serendipity is your vacation muse, as it is ours, this mode of travel can open some pretty swanky — and rarely unlocked — doors.

Whose idyllic life might we step into next? Well, we’re currently swooning over a house in Kenya’s Shimba Hills set into a cliff overlooking an elephant sanctuary. Maybe it will work out; maybe it won’t. With home swapping, dreaming is half the fun.

Behomm markets itself to artists, designers, and other creatives, so its collection of 2,000-plus homes tends toward the design-forward. Membership costs around $400 per year; unlike most other platforms, it doesn’t operate on a points system, but instead lets members work out exchanges on their own.

Founded in 1992, HomeExchange is the granddaddy of the category, with 170,000 members across 145 countries. Its luxury tier, HomeExchange Collection, has 5,000 homes in both urban and resort locations, averaging $2.5 million in value. Annual dues are $1,000.

Kindred is a members-only house-swapping network with more than 30,000 residences around the world, most of them midrange apartments in major cities. There’s no membership fee; the company earns revenue from service fees.

ThirdHome lists 17,500 luxury properties (and yachts!) in 100 countries valued at a minimum of $500,000 each. The directory skews toward vacation homes, including in branded residences such as Rosewood or St. Regis. Membership is $295 per year, with rental fees of $495 per week and up.

Emma Sloley grew up in Australia and now divides her time between California and the city of Mérida, Mexico. Her travel writing has appeared in Travel + Leisure, Departures, New York, and others, and her novel The Island of Last Things will be published by Flatiron in summer 2025.