Does anyone have experience with setting up direct home exchanges with other home owners on the site?
We have a lovely house with great views in a desirable area, and we’d love to do direct exchanges with other hosts that have a similar situation.
Has anyone done this?
Do you have advice about how to propose this to other home owners?
Thanks, Rebecca
The site really isn’t set up for this. There are, however, many “combined” members who both sit and have sitters, so it’s possible. This happened to us once almost by accident when I responded to a sit, and half-jokingly mentioned that if they happened to be heading our way, they could sit for us. They were. We did. It worked that one time, but now they’ve moved back to our city!
There is no option to list for this, and the odds of working out dates etc would be small.
The thing I’ve found is that if you think of other members as “trusted” this works like an “indirect” home exchange. The person sitting in my apartment isn’t directly exchanging with me, but they are enabling me to travel and sit for someone else who might even be sitting for someone else.
If you are talking about a a several months option with flexible start dates – London for LA – for instance, this definitely is NOT the site for that.
Hi @rlhornbach welcome to the forum!
Interesting. I suppose in a thread like this members could DM each other and see how that goes.
It even could be that home hosts and THsitters that are “repeats” and have a history may even attempt such an exchange.
Part of the mutual tangible benefit of THS is the exchange and review that follows, so such a coordination would not be easy through the THS platform.
Probably a strong majority of members in the community are in it for the THS concept.
I believe there is a network that does a home exchange as you are thinking.
It’s not really setup that way. That said if you connect with another sitter/HO, you could certainly setup sit dates to do this. Only issue I see is since you both have pets, how do you do a walk through with the sitter on both sides on the same day?
There are actually home exchange sites you could sign up for , not sure if you’re already on any? People like us home exchange? Sorry, hopefully its not against the rules to post that.
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I know. (Because we did it that one time.) You don’t always need an inperson walk through – especially with cats. We stopped by and did an in person handover at the sit. We gave our keys to the homeowners who drove to our home and became the sitters. They didn’t have the in person handover but we gave them video and a detailed welcome guide. They were fine.
Again, I think the odds of this situation occurring again are pretty low and also depend on what one is looking for. As we often look for drivable getaways from our city, it’s entirely possible we’ll run into people who happen to be coming here and might be interested, but they might not be comfortable with it.
Rebecca, You could create a listing with dates (whether or not you have a pet), looking for a house/pet sitter.
I think it would be best if it looked like a standard listing.
You could say, “Strong preference given to Sitters who desire to exchange homes with us.” If that statement is allowed.
Some members might wrap their brain around the idea and contact you by applying for your Sit.
We are only Sitters for THS and also belong to a home exchange organization. We have been very active on both sites, and several of our home exchanges have included watching a dog. We love dogs! We don’t have any pets, so the exchange partners stayed in our home and did not have to watch any pets. Anything is possible!
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This has been discussed before, if you wanted to use the spyglass, you might stumble upon more detailed discussions.
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We’ve confirmed a sit for people so they can go and do a sit themselves.
As others have said, that’s not really what the site is for and it would be rare to find that situation. We use this and Home Exchange and between the two, have been able to travel and do exchanges of different combinations/types.
For us, we would be open to exchanges but our dog needs an experienced handler so it would not necessarily be a good fit and not worth it to do a simultaneous exchange with someone on TH.
Regardless, we would recommend using the two platforms in conjunction.