Home swapping cuts holiday costs but brings legal and fraud risks

Home-swapping platforms can make holidays almost free, but travellers must open their own homes to strangers in return, BR reported.

Mandy, who lives in Munich, and her family are planning to stay in private homes in Toronto, Albany and New York. In return, she makes their apartment in south-western Munich available to other travellers.

How the exchange works

Several platforms offer home and apartment swaps, including HomeExchange, HomeLink and People Like Us. HomeExchange, one of the largest providers, says it has 270,000 active members worldwide. The other platforms each report slightly more than 10,000 members. Germany is not among HomeExchange’s biggest markets, but the company says it is a rapidly growing region.

Members pay an annual fee of between 150 and 175 euros to access the listings. Many platforms also offer customer support and verify members’ addresses and profiles. Apart from possible cleaning fees, the exchange itself is free.

Some providers use a points system, meaning members do not have to swap homes directly with each other. A home is assigned a certain number of guest points, which the owner receives when another member stays there and can later use for a holiday elsewhere.

However, a home swap requires considerable preparation. Hosts must clean and arrange their homes so that strangers can stay there. The exchanges also depend on trust, while damage or theft remain possible risks. HomeExchange requires guests to authorise a deposit before each exchange and says it will provide financial assistance in certain cases.

Tenants may need permission

The Munich Tenants’ Association says tenants are initially liable to their landlords. It also describes home swapping as a legal grey area. Tenants may generally have uninterrupted visitors for up to six weeks without their landlord’s permission, but that rule assumes a personal relationship between the guests and tenants, which may not exist in a home swap. The association therefore advises tenants to obtain permission for subletting.

Local rules may also apply. In Munich, for example, using an apartment as a holiday home for more than eight weeks in a calendar year may count as misuse of housing.

Online fraud is another risk. Mandy once reserved accommodation, only to be asked afterwards to transfer a 1,500 US dollar deposit. The platform’s rules state that it reserves deposits itself and that members should not exchange money apart from cleaning fees. After Mandy reported the incident, customer service blocked the fake profile.

Bavaria’s Justice Minister Georg Eisenreich has also warned about online fraud in the travel sector, including fake bargain offers for holiday apartments.