What is a mutual exchange?
An exchange is when two tenants swap homes. You can swap your home with another Knightstone tenant, a tenant of another housing association or a tenant of a local council.
To swap, you must have our permission and the other landlord's permission, but landlords can’t say no without good reason.
Please remember, if you have a court order because you haven't paid rent or haven't kept to other conditions in your tenancy you may, in fact, have "lost" your tenancy.
The legal term for this is that you are a tolerated trespasser. We won't agree to you registering for an exchange because you don't have a tenancy to exchange with someone else. You may still be in this position even though you are now making rent payments or have kept to other conditions in a court order. If you think this might apply to you, talk to your Neighbourhood Services Officer first before doing anything else.
How to exchange
- You can put an advert in the paper or in a shop-window of the area where you want to live
- You can use national exchange registers such as www.ukhomeswap.co.uk (a fee applies to register) or www.homeswapper.co.uk (registration free of charge for Knightstone residents). For more information about HomeSwapper, please see below
Once you’ve found an exchange
When you’ve found someone to exchange with, contact your local office who will explain the whole process to you.
Once we have inspected your home and met with you and the person you want to exchange with, we will send you a letter telling you if you can exchange. Permission can take a few weeks while the landlords look at the circumstances.
There are times when the landlord can refuse permission, for example if you are a starter tenant, or the home you want to move into will be too small or too big, you owe rent, or if you or the tenant you’re exchanging with has broken the tenancy agreement.
Things to remember
- There are different types of tenancies – make sure you aren’t losing out by moving home. Speak to your housing officer about it.
- You must not attempt to move before you have been given permission, and before the relevant paperwork has been signed by everyone involved in the exchange.
- You must arrange and pay for the move yourself. We are unable to help pay these costs for you.
- If the property you are moving into is in a poor condition you will be responsible for damage caused by the previous tenant.
HomeSwapper
Knightstone residents can register on www.homeswapper.co.uk free of charge (saving the normal cost of £6.95 per 90 days).
- Local and national service.
- Easy to register.
- Generates thousands of potential swaps weekly.
- Match alerts by email and text.
- Forum to share more information.
- Powerful searching.
- Over 27,000 properties registered & waiting for you to swap homes with.
To find out more about exchanging homes go to:
There are also other home swap agencies available, but they may charge you. One example is: