Swapping property

Swap a villa for a boat in Mallorca, Spain

From the beginning I’ve often been asked if yours2share does swaps as well as enable people to share stuff:  sharing and swapping have a similar ethos.  Now with yours2share I’ve already got quite enough to chew, and I was aware that there are many property swap or exchange websites.  So I’ve always reckoned yours2share would stick to sharing.

But this week I’ve been asked three times about holiday home swaps and an interesting ad was posted, so I thought I’d do a bit more finding out about the swap/exchange websites to see who the big players are.  I think the key information is how many properties are listed, what does it cost, and the website’s Page Rank.

Home Exchange, 26,000 properties, about £70/ad, PR=6

1st Home Exchange, 7,000 properties, about £45/year, PR=5

Home Exchange Vacation, 3,300 properties about £17/three months, PR=4

Homebase Hols, 2,000 properties, £29/year, PR=5

Homelink, probably over 3,000 properties but hard to work out, £115/year, PR=5

I haven’t used any of them, but all the above look pretty comprehensive.  I would guess most people pick the website that has the most listings in the specific locations that interest them.

I also had a quick look to see if there are any websites doing boat swaps and other major item swaps, and there are a few, but none appear to have really got going.  As another variant of this, someone posted an ad on yours2share recently to swap time in his seven bed villa in Mallorca, Spain, in return for use of a motor yacht in Mallorca, with the specific requirement that he wanted to get to know the swapper first and for this to be a long term share/swap arrangement.  Nowhere seems to do this kind of share/swap, so I’ve left the ad on yours2share.