It Started With OneExchange Semester
Flatswaps began in 2025 with a problem our founder could not solve: how do you rent a flat in Bologna for five months, from Berlin, in a market you know nothing about?
A semester in Bologna
In 2025, our founder was preparing for an exchange semester in Bologna. The university part was straightforward. Finding somewhere to live was not.
And he did not know which listings were the scams, because scams are local, and so is the knowledge of how to spot them.
Any one of those is an inconvenience. Together they shrink the set of flats you could realistically and safely rent down to almost nothing.
The person with your problem
Then the obvious part. Somewhere in Bologna there was a student preparing to spend a semester in Berlin, sitting with the identical problem pointed the other way: a few months, a foreign market, no local knowledge, the same scams in a different language.
Two people. Two flats. Two problems that cancel each other out.
Fourth floor, no lift, herringbone parquet worn smooth by a century of tenants. Empty from October, because whoever lives here is going to Bologna.
Terracotta floors, a balcony with tomato plants and a moka pot that never quite gets put away. Empty from October, because whoever lives here is going to Berlin.
Neither of them needed to find a flat. They needed to find each other.
The same logic, without the semester
The idea started with an exchange semester, but the reason it works has nothing to do with being a student.
Rental markets across Europe have, in a way, seized up. Rent regulation means someone who has held a contract for years is often paying well below what the same flat would cost on the market today. That is the regulation doing its job, but it has a side effect: it makes moving irrational. Giving up a long-held contract means paying more for less space. So people stay where they are, even once the flat has stopped fitting their life: too big after the children move out, too small after a partner moves in, in the wrong city after a job changes.
The result is a market where the people with the most reason to move are the least able to. Give up your flat and you lose your rent, unless you trade it. A swap between two people in exactly that position is the one move where both sides keep what their contract gave them and still end up somewhere that fits.
Where we are now
Flatswaps has been building since 2025. We are early, and the network grows one city at a time, which is the honest way to describe a product whose value comes entirely from the person on the other side of the swap.
We are working on both halves of the same idea: the short, time-limited exchange that started all of this, and the permanent swap between two people the market has locked in place.
Our Values
The principles behind what we build, and behind how we decide what to build next.
Rethink the status quo
Renting has worked the same way for decades, and most attempts to improve it only make the old model run faster. We start by asking whether the model itself has to hold, and build from the answer rather than from convention.
Find the unobvious solution
The best answer to a hard problem is rarely the first one on the list. We go looking for the one nobody has tried. Two people stuck in the same position, trading places, is exactly that kind of answer.
Own what we build
We carry ideas from the first sketch through to the thing people actually use, and we stay responsible for them afterwards. Nobody here hands a problem over at the halfway point.
Care about the experience
Moving home is one of the more stressful things a person does. Every detail we get right, whether that is a clear message, an honest listing or a process that surprises nobody, takes weight off someone at a difficult moment.
Our Impact So Far
Growing a global community of home swappers, one match at a time.
Meet Our Team
A team of renters, operators, and builders united by the belief that home swapping should be mainstream.
Sarah Chen
Co-Founder & CEO
Former proptech product manager who experienced rental friction firsthand and set out to fix it through peer-to-peer home exchange.
Marcus Rodriguez
Co-Founder & CTO
Full-stack engineer who's lived in 8 cities across 4 countries and built Flatswaps to solve his own relocation headaches.
Nina Meyer
Co-Founder & CPO
Shapes the end-to-end member experience, from onboarding to long-term retention and trust-first product design.
Find the Other Side
Everything here depends on the person whose problem mirrors yours. These are the two ways people find each other.