Sports broadcaster’s new venture, Good Neighbour, aims to help people find suitable homes within their localitiesRTÉ sports broadcaster Jacqui Hurley has set up a new property business called Good Neighbour. Photograph: Bryan O’Brien Louise LawlessWed Jun 03 2026 - 06:00 • 5 MIN READA good neighbour may collect your children from school, drop milk in, or give you a dig-out here and there. But what if being a good neighbour meant swapping houses?That’s what RTÉ sports broadcaster Jacqui Hurley is asking with her new business, Good Neighbour. Similar to house-swapping à la Nancy Meyers’s The Holiday, Good Neighbour wants to offer those looking to move – but stay in their local area – a chance to find a home better suited to their needs and circumstances. Hurley and her husband had noticed two opposing needs when it came to property: that of their parents, who were trying to downsize while remaining locally; and that of their friends in the same area trying to upsize and stay locally too.“I was like, ‘There has to be an easier way for these people to be in the right houses,’” says Hurley.The community element is important to Hurley, who has been living in the south Dublin suburb of Stillorgan for 20 years.“Our neighbour moved and she didn’t want to go further than 2km away,” says Hurley. “She had looked in loads of places around the area and just couldn’t find a house that suited her needs. I asked her, ‘Why do you love it so much?’ and she said, ‘Because this is where I live. This is where my people are, where my neighbours are.’“And that’s exactly the way I feel. I love living on my road, having the chats with people, being part of the GAA club or where the kids are in school, and we walk to everything. We walk up to the shop, to the school, to the GAA club.[ Five-star living by the golf course in MaynoothOpens in new window ]“All that stuff means an awful lot to us. All our friends are in the area. I love where I live and couldn’t really think about living somewhere else, so I understand the attachment because I live and breathe it every day.” Jacqui Hurley hosting RTÉ's The Sunday Game. Photograph: Ray McManus/Sportsfile Swapping homes doesn’t dispense with the need for legalities. Both parties in the transaction are still obliged to comply with all the legal requirements for a property sale or purchase. All involved will have full legal representation and independent valuers to ensure they are protected and their best interests catered for.While these measures are of course essential features in any regulated property market, they are especially important in the case of the service being offered by Good Neighbour – where one party is bringing a larger and usually more valuable property to the table and the other is offering a smaller and less valuable property along with a payment in return.[ Downsizing in Ireland: ‘It was horrific stuff. There has to be an easier system’Opens in new window ]The matchmaking side of Good Neighbour involves Hurley and her team looking for houses that fit what someone is looking for, even to the point of going door-to-door. Having sourced potential movers, Good Neighbour lists the details and agreed values of their properties on its website with the aim of finding a match with the right buyer based on location, size and what both sides are looking for.Where a potential swap is identified, a valuation is established for the two properties; if both parties are happy to continue, Good Neighbour will help them to negotiate the price difference and agree the move.Once an agreement is reached between the downsizer and the party trading up, the two parties’ solicitors prepare their respective legal packs simultaneously. Good Neighbour says it can also connect those trading up to the larger and more valuable property, and looking to secure approval for a top-up on their existing mortgage, with the appropriate professional advisers. At the point of exchanging contracts, a non-refundable deposit is paid by the upsizer, giving the downsizer greater certainty that the swap will proceed. Everybody wants to see their parents live happy and comfortably and everyone wants to see young families get the same opportunityGood Neighbour says the house-swap transaction will typically take between four and six weeks to close from contract signing. The top-up payment is transferred to the downsizer and keys are exchanged, allowing both parties to move into their new homes.Hurley says she recently spoke to a woman living in a four-bedroom house in south Dublin, who was looking to move into a smaller home but hadn’t found somewhere suitable in her area. “She didn’t want to sell. I said, ‘What if I could find you a two-bedroom house around the corner?’ And she said, ‘Well, I’d take your hand off for that.’”Hypothetically, if the woman’s house had been valued at €700,000, and the upsizing couple’s property had cost €450,000, and they were to do a swap, they’d be looking for €250,000 in a mortgage to facilitate it. The difference in value between the two properties in effect becomes the new price for the couple trading up.Listing a property on the Good Neighbour website is free for the first three months, with a €19 monthly fee payable after that. Where Good Neighbour is engaged as the estate agent by the downsizer or the party trading up, a fixed fee is payable based on the value of their property. In cases where prospective buyers have their own estate agent engaged to sell their existing home and retain Good Neighbour solely for the purpose of locating a new one in the same area, the matching fee is €499.Where someone uses Good Neighbour as their sole estate agent, listing their home for sale while also endeavouring to source a new one for them, a fixed fee is charged according to the value of their property. The minimum payable is €4,500 inclusive of VAT for properties with a value of up to €500,000, with a maximum of €12,000 levied on homes valued at €1 million and above. Given how busy Hurley is in her work as a sports broadcaster with RTÉ, why take the time and the effort to do this? [ What will €795,000 buy in Greece, Sicily, France, Portugal and Co Galway?Opens in new window ]“I know it’s slightly left of centre and lots of people might go, ‘God, what does this sports presenter know about the property market?’ There’s probably trepidation around that, but it’s actually more the human level of how you try to solve a problem that you’ve watched and you’ve seen your friends and your family go through. All you’re trying to do is just help that.“A lot of them [potential downsizers] have their own kids, they have grandkids, and if they think that they’re helping a young family, I genuinely think we don’t give older people enough credit for that, that they would put a huge store in that.“As cliched as it sounds, that’s the core message here. It’s just trying to help people to remember that at the end of it, there are humans who just want to help each other to find a place that suits their needs better.“Everybody wants to see their parents live happy and comfortably and everyone wants to see young families get the same opportunity. If this can help both of them to do that, then I’d like to think it will be something that a lot of people would get behind.”IN THIS SECTION