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House swopping sites


lizq

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Does anyone have experience of house swopping (specifically Oz with Scotland) with one of the established companies?

Any information gratefully received

ith

Hallo Lizq

 

Yes I did a house swap in 2012 with 'Homelink' - if you google it, it should come up, but note there is a site for swapping council houses of the same name!

 

We had a very good experience. You can look on the homelink site for free, but have to pay £110 or so to join - which allows access to contact details of properties you like the look of. We wanted a non-simultaneous swap, which reduced the number of possible swaps, but I wasn't happy to be in Australia if something went wrong with our house back in Wales. None of the people who contacted us had a property where we wanted to stay (Sydney) but Homelink encourage you to approach people yourself and not just wait for offers, so I did. We had two great swaps for two weeks each with two couples who wanted to tour Wales, and both were fine

 

The most important thing is to check out your insurance and make sure you are still covered if you lend your house to someone. This is what stopped us from repeating the swap - we couldn't get a straight answer from anyone about house insurance. I think you have to accept that your contents are not going to be covered if you lend your house to strangers but we were concerned about our buildings insurance. Our insurers (Lloyds) said on the phone that it would be okay but I later read something in the fine print that seemed to cast a doubt on that.

 

Worth a look though - we had four weeks in two beautiful Sydney houses for the cost of the membership - and also met some lovely people.

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