Moving home

Swapping your home

You can swap your rented home with another housing association or local council tenant. This is called mutual exchange.

You don’t have to know the person you’re swapping homes with, but both tenants need to have permission from their landlord.

How a mutual exchange works

You can use an online system called HomeSwapper to find other social housing tenants to swap with.

HomeSwapper is like an estate agent’s website – you can see maps and photos of different homes that are available to swap.

You’ll need to register for a HomeSwapper account. Once you have been approved, you can upload details of your property and start searching for a new home.

Every night, HomeSwapper searches through the database of registered tenants to find suitable swaps, then contacts tenants with opportunities by email and text.

After you’ve found a potential swap

You can make an application after you’ve found someone to exchange with and both of you have agreed to swap.

Apply online using SwapTracker, which you can access from your HomeSwapper account. The household you’re swapping with will need to complete an application too.

After you apply, we’ll do some checks which will include visiting your home to carry out an inspection. In the meantime, you can track the progress of your application through SwapTracker.

If you have any questions about your application, please check SwapTracker before contacting us.

If you’ve already found a potential swap that’s not on HomeSwapper

Contact us about your swap online. We’ll take you through the application process and set you up with a HomeSwapper and SwapTracker account so you can manage your swap.

You can also call us on 020 3535 3535. Our phones are open from Monday to Friday, 8am – 6pm.

Approving or rejecting your swap

We will make a decision about whether to approve your swap within 42 days of your application.

We’ll either approve the swap, reject it, or give conditional approval (this means that there’s something you need to do first, like clear any rent arrears).

Swaps can be rejected for a number of reasons. Usually this will be because:

• You have rent arrears.
• The swap could lead to overcrowding or spare bedrooms (known as under-occupation).
• The property is designed for people with specific needs.
• The other landlord has not given consent.
• One of the applicants has a court order against them for breach of tenancy conditions.

We may also reject a swap if the other household isn’t eligible for the swap.

Once we have approved your swap, we will discuss with you a date when the swap can go ahead. This will be at least 14 days after the date of approval, so please don’t book anything in until we’ve agreed the completion date with you.

Moving to an empty home

We have a small number of empty properties that we advertise on Housing Jigsaw.

You can use this portal for pictures of the available homes, get details on the rent, see whether the place has a garden, check out the road and things like that.

Tenants bid on a home when they see a place they like. When the bidding window closes, we’ll create a shortlist of applicants based on agreed banding criteria. We’ll then contact the top applicant to arrange a viewing.

If the applicant wants the home, we’ll check their eligibility, inspect their home and make sure their accounts are clear. If everything’s okay, we’ll make them an offer.