You in Madrid and I in Tokyo. It could be the title of a Saturday afternoon movie, but it is the realization of a booming trend: exchanging the house with strangers for trips or commuting. Reducing costs (saving on the price of accommodation), but also getting to know cities in a more authentic way and with a local prism are the motivations of the increasingly numerous group of people who join this kind of philosophy of life close to the cheap one, based on mutual trust and in which less importance is given to what is material. This holiday model goes further and in the last three years the leading platform, HomeExchange, has doubled the number of users in Spain. Most experiences are very satisfying, although sometimes the change gives unwanted surprises.
“In the beginning 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, aged 14, 10 and 5, and for 12 years they have been exchanging their homes in order to travel. He works in the field of pharmacy and she is a pediatrician. They came to the exchange through acquaintances after having stayed many times in Airbnb apartments. Despite the initial reluctance, they have gone from less to more. “We have gone from mistrust to full trust,” sums up Centellas. It’s a way to see the world differently and “more real” and enjoy nature, they say. That is why they have gone from exchanging in the summer to doing it three or four times a year. Very soon they are going to Vall de Boí (Lleida) and will also spend three weeks in Norway.
Each exchange is unique: you can change the house, include the cars, which Marc and Anna have also done, and even have to take care of the pet. “When we travel we have cats and chickens”, jokes Knörr. This family from Barcelona came to the world of exchange through Guest to Guest, which a few years ago absorbed HomeExchange, which is now the world leader in exchanges. It is not the only platform, because there are others, such as HomeLink or Homeswapholidays. But in Spain, the second market for HomeExchange after France, the platform has doubled the number of users and has gone from 8,470 in August 2020 to 17,646 in June 2022, explains Pilar Manrique, spokesperson in Spain. From August 2020 to 2023 the number of members has grown by 108%, he says. Manrique explains that the platform emerged 30 years ago in the United States and they merged with France’s Guest to Guest in 2019. He says an annual fee of 160 euros is paid, which offers cancellation and damage guarantees. And profiles are also verified.
“You go to places you might never have thought of visiting,” explains 39-year-old Madrid businessman Lorenzo Palomares. It has been five years since he let his 40 m2 flat near the center of Madrid and he has already done 75 exchanges and visited 30 countries: Serbia, Ecuador and Morocco are some of them. He works remotely and has no schedule, which allows him great flexibility to change homes. He is now going to Valencia for more than a month and with his partner is trying to close several exchanges in Tokyo and Kyoto for next year. What attracts this Madrid native to the exchange is living the experience like a local, although he acknowledges that there are few household items in his home. “I have the right one, it’s almost like a hotel”. Maybe that’s why he says he doesn’t have the perception that someone is invading his home.
The “disinterest in what is material” is another of the characteristics that define people who exchange, explains Anna Knörr, because if you don’t “you suffer too much”. In their case, the only point of conflict is the toys, but they have a solution: they put up a sign in which they warn that they do not want any object to be used and “it is respected”. Everything is enticing for them, who also value having in the destination house everything they need for the holidays. And they are attracted by the wealth that the exchanges entail for Tina, Sara and Joan, their children.
And the fact 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 (three children) made their debut in exchanges after living in Edinburgh. “It’s a pass to do it with children because you travel without having to carry so many things”. Thanks to the exchange, Ainara and her family have celebrated 20 years of marriage in Phuket (Thailand), in an “impressive” house in front of the beach. They live in Leitza (Navarre). His house is surrounded by nature and many Catalans pass by. Now, for example, Ana González will go there with her two 19-year-old children, who has made her debut this year in the exchange to save money and also because she believes in the “philosophy of change”. For Easter, it was Ana who prepared her flat, located in Barcelona’s Gràcia neighborhood, for Ainara and her family, and the change left this Barcelona native delighted, who sees in these exchanges “a way out to a such a materialistic society”.
Trust is one of the keys. “You leave them at your house, but they come to yours”, sums up Zabaleta, who explains that he doesn’t look at other people’s drawers and trusts that the rest don’t either. “The people who do this are good people”, says Anna Knörr. But exchanging homes is not an immediate thing, because to get a destination “you have to spend a lot of time”, explains the pediatrician. And it is that getting an exchange squared is not always easy. They can be simultaneous (house by house on the same days), reciprocal (different days) or directly unidirectional (in exchange for points). The interested party, first of all, explores the available houses and sends proposals to those that seem most interesting (there is a calendar to indicate availability dates). An exchange of messages is initiated to fit everything, especially if it is reciprocal. You can also opt for an exchange for points if the owners of the home where one wants to stay have availability, but are not interested in going to the other’s destination. The process, of course, must also work in the opposite direction.
That’s a lot of requests and a lot of work. You arrive at a clean house or flat, in most cases, and that’s how it should be when you leave. A task in which you have to invest a part of the trip, but in the case of Marc and Anna’s family, it is done as a team and also serves as a learning experience for their children. When they were in Ireland doing a route they remember that they had to clean three houses.
It is key, the interviewees explain, to have an open mind because the final destination is sometimes not the one you had initially thought of. The Centelles-Knörr know this well, who admit that Norway was not among their summer plans. Just like El Hierro, which was not a place that Lorenzo Palomares planned to visit, but which ended up being a “good experience”.
But giving up your home to a stranger sometimes brings unpleasant surprises. This is the case of Olivia Hita, who has made exchanges with her partner through Craigslist, which operates mainly in the United States. Thanks to this he has been to New York several times. He doesn’t have a good memory of one of the changes. Being in Brooklyn, he saw through Facebook that the young women to whom he had lent his flat in Barcelona’s Eixample had organized a party. And when they returned, they found the marks of the celebration: “It was all dirty”. Despite this, he did not stop exchanging and remembers that when he returned from another exchange, the woman who had lent him her house in Los Angeles had moved the furniture to her flat in Barcelona following the fengshui philosophy. Despite the initial impact, they chose to maintain the new distribution, which they still maintain today.
Low cost travel creates addiction and those who were once recommended, now sell the advantages of this type of vacation. Anna Knörr jokes that she is its ambassador and Lorenzo Palomares laughingly confesses that he has already “evangelized half of Madrid”.
