You to Barcelona and I to Norway. Or You to Madrid and I to Tokyo. It could be the title of a Saturday afternoon movie but it is the confirmation of a booming trend: exchanging the house with strangers for a few days or weeks for trips or displacements. Lowering costs (saving the price of accommodation) but also getting to know cities or countries in a more authentic way and with a local perspective are the motivations of the increasingly numerous group of people -on many occasions entire families- who join this kind of Philosophy of life close to barter, based on mutual trust and in which less importance is given to material things. This vacation model is growing and in the last three years the leading platform, HomeExchange, has doubled the number of users in Spain. Most of the experiences are very satisfactory and a bond is even created that goes beyond the exchange, although on some occasions the exchange leaves unwanted surprises.
“At first we took the bank papers and the thermomix to the in-laws’ house. Now we leave everything”. Marc Centellas and Anna Knörr, both 44 years old, live in Barcelona with their three children, ages 14, 10 and 5, and they have exchanged their homes for about 12 years to be able to travel. He works in the pharmacy field and she is a pediatrician and they came to the exchange through some acquaintances and after having stayed many times in Airbnb apartments. Despite initial fears or reluctance, they have gone from less to more. They see many more advantages than disadvantages. “We have gone from initial mistrust to full trust,” summarizes Centellas. For them it is a way of seeing the world in a different and “more real” way and enjoying nature. That is why they have gone from exchanging in summer to doing it three or four times a year. Soon they will go to Vall de Boí (Lleida) and will also spend three weeks in Norway.
Each exchange is unique: you can only exchange the house, include the cars as well, which Marc and Anna have also done, and even have to take care of the pet. “When we travel we have cats and chickens and we also have to take care of gardens,” jokes Knörr. And watering the plants is almost a given in all cases. This family from Barcelona entered the world of exchanges through Guest to Guest, which a few years ago absorbed HomeExchange, the world leader in exchanges. It is not the only platform dedicated to exchange, there are others such as HomeLink or Homeswapholidays.
“You travel in a different way and you go to places that perhaps you would never have considered visiting,” says Lorenzo Palomares, a 39-year-old businessman from Madrid. Five years ago he gave up his 40-square-meter apartment near the center of Madrid and has already made 75 exchanges and visited 30 countries: Serbia, Colombia, Ecuador or Morocco are some of them. Palomares teleworks and does not have schedules, something that allows great flexibility to move and change homes. Now he is going to Valencia for more than a month and together with his partner he is trying to close several exchanges to Tokyo and Kyoto for next year that he would like to link with Australia and New Zealand. What attracts this man from Madrid to home exchange is living the experience like a local, although he acknowledges that there are few typical household objects in his house. “I have just enough, it’s almost like a hotel.” Perhaps that is why he assures that he does not have the perception that someone is invading his house.
The “detachment to the material” is another of the characteristics that define the people who exchange, explains Anna Knörr, because if you don’t “suffer too much”. In her case, the only point of conflict is her children’s toys, but they have already found the solution: they put up a sign notifying them if they do not want them to use any object and “it is respected”.
Everything is incentives and comforts for them, who also value having everything essential for vacations in the destination house. But what attracts them the most is the experience of living the trip in a more authentic way and, also, the wealth that these exchanges represent for Tina, Sara and Joan, their children.
And it is that exchanging houses has many followers among families. This is the case of Ainara Zabaleta, a 46-year-old primary school teacher. She and her family made their debut on the exchanges after living in Edinburgh for a few years and already having three children. “It is a joy to do it with children because you travel without having to carry so many things: the houses have everything”.
Thanks to the exchange, Ainara and her family have celebrated 20 years of marriage in Puket (Thailand) in an “impressive” house in front of the beach. They live in a house in Leitza (Navarra) and she says that the French are the ones who ask her to exchange the most. And precisely thanks to an exchange last year she was in Paris at the Coldplay concert. Her house is surrounded by nature and many Catalans also pass through it. These days, for example, Ana González will go with her two 19-year-old children, who has debuted this year in the exchange for saving money and also because she believes in the “barter philosophy.” At Easter it was Ana who prepared her apartment, located in the Barcelona neighborhood of Gracia, for Ainara and her family and the exchange left this Barcelonan delighted, who sees in these exchanges “a way out of such a materialistic society”. .
Trust is one of the keys for those who are encouraged to exchange. “You leave your house to them but they come to yours,” summarizes Zabaleta, who explains that he does not look at other people’s drawers and trusts that the rest do not either. “The people who do this are good people,” says Anna Knörr. But exchanging houses is not something immediate, because to get a destination “you have to spend a lot of time,” explains the pediatrician. And it is that achieving balance an exchange is not always easy. Exchanges can be simultaneous (house to house and on the same dates), reciprocal (house to house but on different dates) or directly or ‘unidirectional’ (in exchange for points). The interested party first explores the available houses and sends proposals to those that seem most interesting (users have a calendar to indicate the dates they would like to travel or when they are away and their home is available). Thus begins an exchange of messages to match dates, especially if it is reciprocal. You can also opt for an exchange for points if the owners of the house in which one wants to stay have availability but are not interested in going to the destination of the other.
The process, of course, must also work in the opposite direction: proposals can come from the most unexpected places and lead to trips that one would not have considered.
There are many requests and a lot of work. You arrive at a clean house or apartment, in most cases, and that is how it should be when you leave it. It’s the deal. A task in which a part of the trip must be invested, but in the case of Marc and Anna’s family it is done as a team and also serves as learning for their children. When they were in Ireland en route they remember that they had to clean three houses. Another point in favor of the exchange for the Centellas-Knörr, who also exchange an apartment on the Costa Brava, is that “they guard our house and it is more difficult for thieves to enter.”
It is key, the interviewees say, to have an open mind because the final destination is sometimes not the one you had initially considered. The Centellas-Knörr know this well, and they admit that Norway was not initially among their summer plans. As El Hierro was not a place that Lorenzo Palomares considered visiting, but it came up and ended up being a “good experience”.
Although most are positive experiences, giving up your home to a stranger sometimes leaves unpleasant surprises. This is the case of Olivia Hita, who has traded with her partner through Craigslist, which operates mainly in the United States. Thanks to that, she has been to New York several times. But she does not keep good memories of one of the experiences. While in Brooklyn, she saw through Facebook that the young women to whom she had lent her apartment in Barcelona’s Eixample had thrown a party. And when they returned, they found the traces of the celebration: “everything was dirty,” she recalls. Despite this, she did not stop exchanging and recalls that upon her return from another exchange, the woman who had lent them her house in Los Angeles had moved the furniture in her apartment in Barcelona following the feng shui philosophy. . Despite the initial impact, they chose to maintain the new distribution, which they still maintain today.
In some cases, in addition, a bond is created and strangers become friends. Marc Centellas tells it about some Dutchmen with whom they did an exchange, who distorted the last day by going together from Utrecht to Amsterdam and with whom they write frequently and wish each other Christmas wishes.
Low cost travel is addictive and those who were once recommended are now selling the benefits of this way of vacationing with acquaintances and friends. While Anna Knörr jokes that she is an ambassador, Lorenzo Palomares confesses with a laugh that she has already “evangelized half of Madrid”.
And all the interviewees already have destinations in mind. Ainara Zabaleta, for example, would like to go to Mallorca and also achieve an exchange with India. The dream of Marc Centellas and his family is Iceland and they are also tempted to take the leap and do something in the United States. Ana González would love to make an exchange with Menorca and Lorenzo Palomares aspires to be able to close Japan-Oceania for the next few months.
