Review date: April 2014
exchangeo.co.uk
Founded in 2007
Specialty: France
Free to make a listing, €27 to contact members
English, Spanish, French, Italian, German
3045 listings
Listings by region:
- Africa: 160
- Asia: 26
- Europe: 2654
- Oceana: 28
- North America: 110
- South America: 67
Searching: There is a map based search that allows you to select pre-defined regions within France but it does not work for the rest of the world. The non-map search uses a drop down box for country, which can be enhanced by a list of dates and number of travelers as well as home type. There is no advance search or further ability to narrow down search results. This means you end up with all results in a country, which makes it very difficult to find specific cities or towns of interest.
Listings: The listings returned from the search have only sparse information displayed and a majority of the properties returned in my random search of Spain did not even have a display picture. The individual listings include a map, a basic overview, and one picture. The site claims people are allowed to upload more than one picture but a quick scan through some listings didn’t show anyone doing this. They also tell you which languages you can use to communicate with the owner. There is no information on the number of people in the swap family. Among the more difficult to use listings I’ve seen.
This site offers the following variations on house swapping:
- simultaneous or non-simultaneous house swap – this is the traditional model where two parties swap houses for an agreed upon set of dates.
Site design: Poorly done functionality but the look and feel could be ok if the site was better designed for searching and listings.
Additional features: Exchangeo offers a standard house swap contract, and an email system within their website for contact between members.