House Exchange www.houseexchange.org.uk

Almost 6 years of frustration using this social housing exchange site and being unable to secure a move because tenants using this site are not aware of the issues I detail below, mainly because neither the organisation who runs it (Clarion I believe?), nor landlords (the councils and housing associations) actually advise people about quite a few of these important issues that are restricting and impacting tenants ability to move.

With previous experiencing of working in housing teams for local authorities, housing associations, an estate agent and Citizens Advice Bureau, I want to share this knowledge knowing your housing officers probably haven’t.

Firstly, there’s occupancy requirements which councils have to comply with, due to changes of housing regulations in an effort to reduce homelessness. Many councils and housing associations have signed up to 5-10 year Homelessness Reduction Strategies and, as a result, tenants must meet the occupancy requirements. For example, if you’re 2 adults with 1 child, or 1 adult with 2 children, I doubt you’ll ever be entitled to a 4, 5 or 6 bed house due to under occupancy and because there just isn’t the amount of these types of properties available, so please speak to your housing officers to understand what you’re entitlement allows you to have… which will stop you wasting your time waiting for a property you’re never likely to get.

Secondly, more and more local authorities have set ‘local connection’ restrictions, meaning you either have to have family members or a job in the area you wish to move to. If you don’t have either, it’s highly likely your move will not be sanctioned, and vice versa for people wishing to move to your home if yours has this restriction. So again, please check with your housing officers or local council to see if:

A) your property has local connection restrictions or

B) the property you want to move to has local connection restrictions.

After you have agreed a property exchange and completed and returned the necessary exchange forms, your council/housing association will then check your tenancy and rent account. If all is fine, they will then arrange for an electrician and gas engineer (if relevant) to carry out safety tests. Once completed, your exchange is then likely to be approved, at which point you and the other party (or parties if a multi-swap) will have 4-weeks to complete the house exchange(s).

Personally, I don’t understand the reasons for local connection restrictions for social housing tenants. I do understand it’s to keep families together in the community, but even that’s a rarity nowadays? I can understand if it was regarding the sale of private homes to ensure they’re not being used as holiday/second homes, but to restrict the movements for social housing tenants seems abhorrent and makes moving very restrictive and nigh on impossible! This restriction needs to be relaxed..

In addition, you shouldn’t have to pay to use this site… HouseExchange.org.uk. It’s free to register for and your housing association will receive your registration and authorise it. If you’re paying, I’d immediately speak to your housing officer to ask why!

So it is simple. You want to move to a different county but you need someone who wants your county. So when you search there is no option just to seek this so you have to scroll down on every property what you view to see where they want to go which is painstaking.

Then you find one and they say anywhere in the uk. Then you ask for info and they say they want to stay in their county just wasting mine and other people's time.

Worst site on the INTERNET. PERIOD....

Useless website, do not waste your money. I paid (stupidly) for a year upfront, and it doesn't even filter results for you. I had to search through about 300 until I found any relevant ones. Apparently, if you add more than one location to where you want to move to, it will only pick the first one, and the others will be ignored, so you will potentially be missing many matches. No refund, despite me only being on there a few days. And the app doesn't work either... Apparently, they're still 'aware of the problem'. Absolutely appalling, I hope more people read these reviews before joining, especially if paying.

I won't be renewing once my three months is up .the site is absolutley ridiculous.trying to find a match is practically impossible and the people who you message don't have the decency to reply.its not worth the money ,time or effort.its hard enough finding a exchange as it is and sites like this make me frustrated

I've been on this site twice, the first time I got no offers the second time the same sometimes I don't even get a answer back. I wouldn't recommend this site to anyone.

I can't log back in. I forgot my email and can't reset the password because they're asking for a security question that I never entered when registering. They got my money for nothing.

This website is such a waste of time. You cannot find the right match and when I searched for a match I got 4000n results. There is no way you could narrow down the results because they don't have any filters. I asked immediately for a refund and they refused and told me it's my fault that I trusted them and paid. This is a very basic website that doesn't help in finding the result you want. It's more like all they want is just money. There are other alternatives which are way much better such as home swapper and it's free.

Where to start...?

1) Unable send own messages for possible exchanges. They have rubbishy pre-set 'enquires' which don't have any relevance at all to what you might be asking about.

2) Property details are also pre-set standard descriptions, set by the site, and are completely useless. Unable to write the details of your own property.

3) I very much doubt that any pre-set contact mails that you do send, actually reach the other parties.

It clearly is'nt runing as as a house exchange site. What, I wonder is it's purpose?

Waste of time and money changing to this new format, completely useless site now makes it impossible to find anything and contact with other users more complicated. BYE,....

Not only do I have to pay for this service (which should be free) but I paid up 24hrs ago, no full access so I cannot actually use what I am paying for, no reply from their contact details (one lousy email address that says to allow for 5 working days for a reply!) and their feeback form 'security' system will not work so I cannot even give them feedback there. Hence trying to find who hosts them, and I found this site, so I am putting it here to A/ warn others how shabby their customer service is, especially in this day and age, and B/ that hopefully they might react to this!