Baandy

Home swapping built on verified trust

Baandy set out to reinvent travel: a community where people swap their homes for free instead of paying for accommodation. CodeLeap designed and built the mobile app that makes it work — browsing, matching, messaging, verification and notifications — and keeps it running.

What we did CodeLeap built the iOS and Android app with house profiles, matching, city search and in-app chat, and integrated Superhog for independent identity and home verification plus damage protection, staging onboarding so members can explore with an incomplete profile but must verify before contacting anyone.

Baandy is a travel accommodation app for people who want to see the world without the cost or the ethical misgivings that come with conventional short-term lets. Members swap apartments with like-minded travellers at no charge, removing accommodation from the cost of a trip altogether and replacing a transaction with a reciprocal arrangement between two households. CodeLeap designed and built the platform, where the central engineering and design problem was not the swapping mechanism itself but the trust that has to exist before anyone will hand over their keys.

Product features

Detailed house profiles

Members create full listings of their homes with descriptions, amenities, high-resolution photography and explicit house rules, so that both sides of a swap know exactly what they are agreeing to. Setting expectations in the listing rather than in conversation prevents most of the friction that would otherwise surface after a match.
Profile validation

Before a member can fully engage with the platform, they must complete and verify key profile details including identity checks and home verification, which materially reduces the risk of fraudulent accounts and mismatched swaps. In a marketplace where the asset being exchanged is someone's home, verification is not a feature to be bolted on later.
Like and dislike matching

Members browse listings and register interest by liking a profile, while disliking removes it from their search entirely. This gives the discovery process a light, familiar feel and keeps each member's view of the platform focused on homes they would genuinely consider.
City-based search with filters

A search function organised around cities, with filters for home type, amenities and availability, lets members find swaps in the destinations they actually want to visit rather than browsing an undifferentiated list.
In-app chat

Once two members match, they can talk directly within the app, with real-time messaging, media sharing and pre-set prompts to steer the conversation towards house rules, expectations and travel dates. Keeping these conversations on the platform also keeps them within the safety framework the platform provides.
Structured prompt questions

A set of prompt questions encourages members to describe their home, their lifestyle and what they expect from a swap, which helps both sides assess compatibility before committing. Much of the trust in a peer-to-peer exchange is built from exactly this kind of small, specific disclosure.

Challenge

Three problems defined the build. The first and largest was trust, because asking two strangers to exchange homes demands a level of confidence that no amount of interface polish can manufacture on its own. The second was onboarding, since the platform needed complete, verified profiles to function, yet a long and demanding sign-up process would lose members before they ever reached a listing. The third was the experience itself, which had to make profile creation, discovery and communication feel effortless despite the volume of detail a home swap requires. Getting any one of these wrong would have undermined the others.

Solution

CodeLeap addressed all three by treating security, onboarding and interaction as a single design problem. Trust is underpinned by an integration with Superhog's verification system and damage protection, giving members independent identity and property checks alongside financial protection if something goes wrong. Onboarding was staged so that new members can explore the platform with an incomplete profile but must supply the key details before they can interact with anyone, which keeps the barrier to entry low while ensuring the data the platform depends on is actually there. Interaction is supported by structured profiles, the like and dislike mechanism for signalling interest, and in-app chat with prompts, so that arranging a swap feels straightforward rather than negotiated.