- What if the Good Life Requires Giving Up Some Freedom? - September 15, 2026
- What Climbing Grouse Mountain Taught Me About Financial Freedom - August 18, 2026
- My Apartment Gave Me Something That Money Can’t Buy - August 4, 2026
Back in 2022, when we slept until noon, made plans on the fly, didn’t have lego-shaped dents on our feet, and didn’t spend most of our time cleaning puree off the floor, wasting two weeks on the phone with Airbnb support was no big deal.
I call those days, my pre-servant days.
Back in those days, I was trying to plan a trip to Peru with our friends Alan and Katie. Since we preferred staying in places with laundry, a kitchen, and a living room, Airbnb was our go to. Little did I know, not only would I get cancelled on multiple times by Airbnb hosts, the place we ended up staying at in Lima would be damp, dangerous (the electric heater would spark whenever you plugged it in), have broken Wifi, and 50% of a working stove. Oh, and we nearly got kicked out before our check-out date because the “superhost” got the dates confused.
To add insult to injury, finding this “superhost” came about only after we’ve been cancelled on multiple times—once by an unscrupulous host who requested that I cancel the booking, so he wouldn’t get dinged on his 5-star superhost status!
After wasting weeks of my time on the phone with Airbnb, getting passed from agent to agent, having my issue closed/re-opened/closed again (without my consent), I finally got them to cough up a $200 credit to make up for the inconvenience.
Little did I know this “credit” was actually a coupon, which meant that you could only use it once. If you use it and have to cancel or change your plans for any reason, you forfeit that coupon.
This was the final straw, and I couldn’t believe that this was the same platform that I was waxing poetic about back in 2019, when we were practically living on it full-time. If you had told me back then that I’d be swearing off Airbnb, despite my 100+ 5 star reviews and how devoted I’d been to the platform for almost a decade, I’d have thought you were nuts.
But here we are. Now that we have an infant son, we no longer have the time to spend hours on the phone with Airbnb support, live in dangerous “ghost hotels” disguised as homes, or risk getting cancelled on last minute.
Unfortunately, relying on hotels for long term stays wouldn’t work for us since we need a kitchen and laundry more than ever.
Luckily (or unluckily), since we’ve had to get a long-term rental to stay around and help take care of my father-in-law over the past few years, we discovered a new platform that’s miles ahead of Airbnb and reminds me of the good ol’ days in 2012 before Airbnb became commercialized.
That platform is HomeExchange.
Ever since I started using this platform, I’ve grown to love it more and more. Not only does it save you tons of money on accommodations when travelling, it’s a community of like-minded travellers, and has helped us make lots of new friends along the way.
After staying in some amazing HomeExchanges in Croatia, Australia, New Zealand, Vancouver, and Mexico, we’ve been able to save $13,000 to date!
And not only that, my experience with having been cancelled on and having to postpone my trip on HomeExchange has been a completely 180 from Airbnb.
When our host in Sydney had to cancel due to a family health emergency, HomeExchange support sent an SOS to all the HomeExchange members, asking if anyone would be willing to host us. They also told me to book a cancellable hotel just in case they can’t find anyone and they would compensate me $120 USD/day. This is way better than Airbnb’s ridiculous offer of 10% off the full price if you get cancelled on 1 week before your check-in date (we all know that prices double or triple by then).
HomeExchange support ended up finding another host for us and we had a great stay without stress. This was super helpful as I was pregnant at the time and didn’t need any anxiety.
When I was the one that had to postpone our trip by a week for the Mexico HomeExchange this past winter, the hosts were kind enough to give back our Guest Points for the days we didn’t stay, even though they weren’t obligated to at all. All 3 of us were sick and coughing up unmentionables at the time, so not having to worry about accommodations was a tremendous relief.
For those of you who have never used HomeExchange, Guest Points is the “currency” used on HomeExchange. It can’t be exchange for cash and is meant to be used as a barter system so you can exchange it for future stays. So, for example, you put up your home for 100 Guest Points per day, someone stays in it and gives you the points, which you can then use it to stay somewhere else at a later time. This is called a non-simultaneous exchange because you are not directly exchanging with the person at the same time at the same place. This ensures that everyone contributes and gets compensated by providing their home for someone to stay and then getting free stays later on.
If you prefer not to use Guest Points, you can also do a direct exchange provided that you find someone with the same travel dates and you want to visit each other’s locations. The filters on HomeExchange lets you choose whether you want to use Guest Points, a Reciprocal exchange (direct swap), or either:
HomeExchange is also great for families and those who have pets because there are “children welcome” filters and “pet welcome” filters:
Conversely, it’s also great for those who have pet allergies because you can also exclude homes that have allergens and only look at pet-free homes:
Now, just like everything else in life, HomeExchange isn’t perfect.
In the interest of full transparency, here are some things you need to know about HomeExchange:
Takes Effort
Since HomeExchange is more about community rather than profit since no money changes hands, it does take effort to find a stay.
In the beginning, you may need to send out 10-15 requests before getting accepted. You may not find ones available for your travel days. You’re trying to build trust and be a part of a reciprocity-based community, so you can’t just throw money at the problem for convenience. You also need to have skin in the game by offering up your place to host. This also ensures that the people on HomeExchange are generally open-minded, laid back, and love to travel. If you’re super picky and “don’t want people touching your stuff,” you’re a better fit for hotels and Airbnb.
PROTIP: you can increase your chances of securing an exchange by filtering the search criteria to find secondary/vacation homes, so that you don’t have to worry about the host needing their primary place to live in during your travel dates.
Cleaning
You should also clean up after yourself since you’re staying for free and it’s considered good manners to leave the place how you found it. To me, this is a small inconvenience to repay your host for their generosity. You can also pay a cleaning deposit, which is something we may do going forward since it’s faster than cleaning it myself now that we have a kid.
Fewer Choices
Again, since you’re staying for free, your options will be more limited than paid accommodations. There are some places where you simply can’t find a HomeExchange. That said, if you’re willing to go a bit farther out, it also opens up your options to try out places you never thought of before. For example, in Auckland, instead of staying downtown, we stayed in a suburb that you have to take a ferry to get to. It ended up being way more peaceful and enjoyable than downtown. I also ended up staying in a 4 bedroom house, which is crazy because that’s not anything I would’ve considered for 2 people (this is before we had our son) if I were booking an Airbnb or hotel. The same thing happened in Mexico, when we stayed in a townhome with its own private pool. So, it’s a nice change of pace and invites you to try new places and homes you never thought of.
PROTIPS:
If you’re new to HomeExchange, it might take a bit of time to develop some trust with existing hosts. Here are some things you can do to gain trust:
- Send the host your Airbnb/VRBO reviews. If you have zero reviews, you can send the host your reviews from other platforms to show that you are trustworthy.
- Host before you stay. Have someone stay in your home to gain positive reviews as a host before you request to stay in someone else’s home.
- Do a simultaneous exchange where no Guest Points are involved, you simply swap homes (of course this depends on whether you can find anyone with the exact same travel schedule as you)
- Look for new hosts who are willing to host new guests in order to get reviews.
- Offer to have a video chat with the host to give them a feel for who you are so you can prove that you are trustworthy ( I did this with every host in the beginning when I had no reviews)
The good news is, once you’ve had at least one five-star review as a host and a guest, you’ll have a much easier time getting accepted. Now that I have multiple five-star ratings as host and guest, I get a yes for every 3-5 requests I sent out. It used to take 10-15 when I was new.
If you rent instead of own a home, make sure you read the rental laws in your area. In my case, I have a great relationship with my landlord because I’ve gone out of my way to improve my place so that it’s in better condition than before I moved in. Even though I’m not obligated to, I tell him about any guests staying in my unit before we travel to ease his mind. It also helps that I prevent high turnover by exchanging with long term guests and repeat guests so it minimizes disruption to my neighbours and makes things easy for my landlord.
Your mileage may vary. If you live in Ontario, the rental laws are on your side. Unless your landlord is your roommate, landlords can’t restrict your guests (provided there is no overcrowding) and it is considered harassment if they try to interfere. In fact, even if they put restrictions on guests in the rental application or lease, this isn’t legal, as it impedes your right to enjoy your home. You’re also not legally obligated to inform them of your guests.
That said, you are responsible for any damage caused by your guests, which brings me to my next point:
Like Airbnb, HomeExchange covers damages up to $1 Million USD and a $500 USD deposit is held through the guest’s credit card so any minor damage can be taken directly from there.
Free Guest Points!
If you are new to HomeExchange, you can get up to 1300 Guest Points for completing the following New Member milestones:
And if you sign up using my sponsor code “kristy-d61e2” you can get an additional 250 Guest Points (100 GP after completing your home profile, 150 GP after you activate your membership). Added that to the 1300 GP, that’s 1550 Guest Points!
HomeExchange is also running a “double the points” campaign this month, so if you pay for a membership by the end of day today, you’ll get double the referral points when you use my code “kristy-d61e2”. 500 additional GP instead of 250GP! (Sorry for the short notice, September kind of got away from me with Little MatchStick constantly distracting me). So in total, you could get up to 1800 Guest Points for getting a membership today! With this many Guest Points to get your started, you could potentially book a 2-week stay for free! (100-200 GP is approximately 1 night, depending on the home you book).
The membership fee costs $220 USD/year (considering how it saved me $13,000 in accommodations over the years, this is a steal) and you won’t get charged until you finalize a stay so there’s no risk. Just remember to be patient because it could take a bit of time in the beginning when you have no reviews as a new user. HomeExchange also gives you the 2nd year free if you don’t find an exchange during the first year. Use my tips above to gain trust and get accepted faster.
What I love the most about HomeExchange is that no money is exchanged between guests and hosts. This is actually a great filter because only those who like travelling will be on the platform, since you can’t convert Guest Points to money. You can only convert it into free accommodations. It’s truly a sharing platform which focuses on community and reciprocity rather than profit. I’ve referred friends to the platform who love it and I’ve made friends from the platform who are wonderful and easygoing.
What do you think? Have you tried HomeExchange?
Full disclosure: This is not a sponsored post. I’m not getting paid to write about HomeExchange, I just love using them and my friends have loved them too so wanted to do a shout out. I do, however, have an affiliate relationship with them so if you choose to sign up and use my sponsor code, we both get Guest Points.
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Do hosts ever host guests while at home, or only when they are away?
I don’t get to travel as often as I’d like, but I don’t mind hosting more often and build up points. However, I’m home most of the time…
Yes, they do. You just have to mention in the description for your home that you are hosting a room and will be at the premise. I’ve requested one of those exchanges before for Azores.
Hmm.
Let’s see.
Having strangers living my home and using my bathroom and bedroom?
Eww.
No.
End of discussion.
Agreed. What once made this blog so appealing was a rejection of home ownership and using geo-arbitrage to live in low-cost places. Many readers enjoy not being tied down to a home, whether owned or rented and they enjoy the idea of flash-packing, staying in different places, going with the direction of the breeze. If you don’t like airbnb there are plenty of other month-long rental options around the world including Europe. Honestly this article comes off as a sponsored post for Home Exchange and makes me wonder how desperate the authors are getting for steady income, running around contacting Home Exchange support…are they really “retired” at this point?
As kristy mentioned, it’s not for everyone…
Thanks for sharing your disgust.
I’ve been considering to sign up since a while but always held back because of the $220USD per year fee. Do you also pay if you only host?
That’s a good point. I think what you can do is put your home up to host and get the new member guest points. Then, only when someone wants to finalize it and stay at your place, pay for the fee. And if you don’t find an exchange to use up the home exchange pts you’ve gained within a year, have the fee re-imbursed. Let me double check on that with Home Exchange support and get back to you.
We are pretty much in the same boat as @Jens…
You introduced #HomeExchange a while back and we personally looked into it when you first published your content on this subject/topic. We would love to be able to utilize their platform as an alternative to AirBnBs and VRBOs but what held us back from being members is their T&C on fee structure.
As a fellow “optimizer”, it is an awesome option AND much like the credit card hacking, trying to figure out how to best incorporate this “pay-to-play” environment.
ImmigrantOnFIRE
That’s why I’d do the risk-free option of only paying if you find a host that’s willing to finalize your stay first. That’s how I started on the platform. Then I loved it so much I immediately hosted to reciprocate.
Ok, so spoke to HE support and here’s what they suggest. You can look to see if there are any home exchanges you want to be a guest at without paying for the membership first. Only pay if you find one you can finalize. I’ve also had friends who hosted and paid for the membership and then were able to use their points to stay in Vancouver (one of the most expensive places for hotels and Airbnb).
If you pay for a membership and don’t find a place to stay for a year, they will give you 2nd year free.
If I were you I’d do the risk-free option to get the new members guest points and see if you can get hosted first and only pay if you get accepted by a host. (send them your Airbnb reviews to show you are trustworthy).
thanks for the article. what about home insurance? in Vancouver Canada, if your guests cause some water leaks or just bad timing pipe burst while they are there and you are away, i am sure insurance will reject the claim. how do you “get over” this ?
thanks.
I’m not familiar with home insurance since I don’t own a home and it varies a lot depending on the type of insurance you have. I’d imagine it’s the same as if you had relatives or friends staying at your place and your pipe happens to burst while there were there. Maybe ask the insurance company what happens in that scenario?
Thanks for responding. we are rentals with tenant insurance. i am 99.9% sure insurance won’t covered any damage caused by guests of short term stays. good that the HE platform covers 1M USD damage. wondering if you heard or know of any cases where HE actually paid (substantial) cost due to damages…
we are 6m – 1yr away from slow travel and off the rat race. planned to stay in south east asia 5 months out of a year. it’s a shame to have to pay 5 months of rent in vancouver and not making use of it.
thanks for introducing HE to me. heard of couch surfer but not HE. thanks again.
Love this idea. Are there any tax implications to doing this? Such as: is swapping homes considered a taxable event? Asking as someone from the U.S.
I’m not sure. Probably a good question for a tax accountant. Or maybe ask Home Exchange in the Q&A section? I know the company is based in the U.S and has been around since the 90s, so I’m guessing that’s not been an issue since most of their base is American. But a good question to ask an accountant never-the-less.
Thanks.
Just used your referral code. Cheers!
I loved the idea, and honestly joined after you previously recommended it. I especially loved the idea as I had previously being involved in the Couchsurfing community.
One person agreed to host me and that experience was very positive, but in my experience most people didn’t reply or sent the generic message. No one really seemed to want to stay at my place.
I think it also works better when you’re able to be in each location for a longer period of time.
Aww sorry to hear that you didn’t get a lot of stays at your place. Glad you enjoy the experience of being hosted though.
I find that I get a higher rate of response by only writing to those that have 80% response rate or above and once I had good reviews as both host and guests I got way more responses.
Contacted HE support via chat. if its not obvious enough you need to be a host to accumulate GPs – guess it make sense in the spirit of forming community.
Yes, they give you some free GP to try it out as a guest to get a sense of the community first. Then later on, after you use up your points, you need to host to be a contributing member of the community. That’s why I love it because it’s about reciprocity not profit.
I’m interested to try this – one thing stopping me from pulling the retirement trigger, even though I probably have enough money now, is that I’m worried about selling my condo, about eventually getting tired of travel and then not being able to afford to buy or rent in my hometown.
But I’m not sure if the value of the accommodation I’d get would make up for the returns I’d get on the sale proceeds, plus the condo fees and property taxes I’d have to pay?
Back of envelope calculation:
– annual returns = 4% of 350k value = 14k
– annual condo fees = 5k
– annual propetry taxes = 3k
So the opportunity cost of holding onto my condo is 22k/yr, or $60/day. When I was in Chiang Mai earlier this year I paid only $23/day for a nice airbnb!
Home Exchange is perfect for this situation. I find HE guests so much more respectful than Airbnb guests (because they are a contributing member of the community, not just paying $$ and using it as a hotel), so you can try to exchange with someone in a place you want to travel to. Put in your home description “looking for long term guests 1 month+ or something like that” Then you if don’t like travel, you can always come back and settle back down.
We have done 30 AirBnB stays in the last 3 years.
While I can say that not every AirBnB that we’ve stayed at has been perfect, I don’t see it as the horror our FIRECracker makes it out to be. Yes, we’ve had a host cancel on us for a one month stay a bit more than a month prior as she had sold the property and yes, one host cancelled 24 hours prior our arrival for a three month stay.
For the first cancelled stay, AirBnB support did not help and it was a frustrating experience. We ended up having to pay about 45% more for another AirBnB instead.
For the second cancelled stay, it turned out that the host was a psycho and we found out AirBnB had delisted her from the platform months prior but hadn’t advised that this had happened which was shocking. On the flip side, AirBnB support did a great job in helping us find a new place for our 3 month stay that was superior to the original booking and gave us a 20% credit of the total 3 month price of the original booking for the replacement booking. We are currently living in that AirBnB as I write this. We actually arranged with host to stay an additional 2 months and cut AirBnB out of picture and got a discounted price. Good guest and good host can come up with creative solutions that are mutually beneficial.
The big difference is whether the cancellation occurs within 30 days of the day you’re supposed to arrive or not. Within 30 days, they accommodate. More than 30 days, they do nothing.
The other thing is, I’ve learned to be careful. Booking with superhosts hasn’t been a problem but watch out if they aren’t superhosts. Also, read the reviews. Even the ones that are under the host but you aren’t booking. If a pattern starts to show in the reviews that you don’t like, don’t book it. Lastly, price. You get what you pay for. There’s no such thing as getting something for nothing. If the listed AirBnB is soooo cheap and comparables are much more costly, you gotta wonder about that. We’re willing to pay a higher price and that cuts down on problems. Doesn’t eliminate it but keeps problems to a minimum.
I’ll add that I do agree that the pricing of the listings on AirBnB is increasing while what is being offered is not and this does create some concern.
As for HomeExchange, begging multiple hosts (10-15 at a pop) feels like a hassle. Also, we don’t have a permanent home so that isn’t an option regardless.
I think the possibility of shit shows can happen both with AirBnB and HomeExchange along with great experiences too. In a few years, we may see a new post on this blog about the failings of HomeExchange.
Overall, we want to book places as we please and not have the hassle of maintaining a permanent home (whether owned or as a rental). That kind of defeats the purpose of being location independent.
30 Airbnb stays in the last 3 years isn’t that many. You’ve gotten lucky so far. I’ve done 120+ stays in 7 years. Their support has been significantly cut back ever since the pandemic. That’s why it started going downhill. This is why you will see Airbnb has a 1.3/5 rating from 13,702 reviewers on Trustpilot while Home Exchange has 4.7/5 from 13,702 reviewers.
I’m glad you still like it. Hope you it stays that way for you.
30 Airbnb stays in 3 years is actually a lot. That’s 10 per year, almost once a month! I wouldn’t put too much faith into Trustpilot, they have come under fire for promoting fake positive reviews and deleting bad ones. If Dave has been happy with Airbnb there’s no need to dismiss his experience as “lucky”. I would rather book an Airbnb than jump through the million different hoops you have laid out above for Home exchange.
Could we possibly make Home Exchange work? We live in a rather warm Mediterranean country and are never there from early May to end of Oct. We’d be happy to offer our place for longish stays over the 6 months but what would we do about cleaning between stays? Organise for it to be done professionally or can the guests be relied upon to leave it in good shape for the next guest?
It’s funny: Ontario rental laws may well allow my tenants to HomeExchange, but the condo rules aren’t really very friendly for that if I were to do it as the owner… probably the “you can borrow a room” type is allowed though.
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This is such a timely post! I’ve also been feeling the “Airbnb fatigue” lately with all those hidden fees and unreliable hosts. The community aspect of HomeExchange sounds much more aligned with the original spirit of the sharing economy. I’ve become obsessed with this kind of lifestyle optimization since I started my own personal challenge: seeing if I could earn more as a freelancer than in my old corporate job. It’s been a total revelation! I found the most effective strategies and step-by-step guides on madcash.pro — it’s an incredible resource for anyone looking to escape the rat race and build a life of freedom. Now that my income is sorted, I’m definitely looking into HomeExchange for my next trip. Thanks for the inspiration!
Twitch ads have become so frequent that it’s almost impossible to follow a live match without missing the best moments. I’ve been using https://www.standsapp.org/twitch/ lately and it’s actually working without those annoying ‘purple screens of death.’ It’s a great way to support the stream while keeping your sanity.
Speaking of making the most out of your home, I’ve been looking into exterior upgrades lately — curb appeal really does affect how guests perceive your space before they even walk in. Found some solid info on what a professional exterior renovation involves at https://www.mbremodels.com/services/exterior/ — helpful for anyone thinking about boosting their home’s value and appeal before listing it on a platform like HomeExchange!