Posted in Traveling Tuesdays
As I mentioned last week we invited ourselves to Hawaii with a couple of friends this week. This is not our first tag-along vacation. I’ll be the first to admit, we are extremely lucky to have some very generous friends. But for those of you that draw the line at imposing on your friends, there is another way to score some free lodging: home exchange.
After all, your house is just going to sit empty while you are on vacation, why not go to another person’s empty house while they enjoy yours? If you are exploring this option, here’s my short list of tips for the first-time home exchanger.
1. There are many reputable sites on-line to find home exchanges. The one I like the most is homeexchange.com because they have the largest number of listings and you have to pay to join. Actually, you only have to pay if you want to create a page to market your own home. You can email anyone with a listing you like when you browse for the site for free, but I’ll just tell you I never respond to those inquiries. For one thing, I find some comfort in knowing that the site has your credit card and knows your identity. If you just email me and don’t even have a listing for me to peruse, I not only don’t think you are serious, I don’t even know if you are real.
2. When you do find a homeowner that you’d like to approach for a trade, write a personal note explaining why you found their home attractive, share your plans for your trip, and tell a little bit about yourself. This is a chance to highlight a few great things about your house and things to enjoy in your area as well. If you do wind up trading homes with this family, you are going to spend months building a relationship. You don’t get a second chance to make a first impression.
3. When you are browsing listings on the website, keep in mind that the actual home will never look better than the photos your exchanger has posted on their exchange page. If you have any reservations after viewing the photos, you probably won’t be comfortable there.
4. I recommend practicing with a local trade, just to get your feet wet. Go away for the weekend somewhere that’s not too far away. If it’s not exactly what you bargained for, at least it’s only two days and you will come away with a better idea of what you are looking for next time.
5. During the course of building your home-exchange relationship, you should work out how you expect to leave each other’s homes. Just strip the beds or remake them too? Where does the trash go? No matter what they say about how to leave their house, just remember, no one will ever fault you if you leave it tidier than they expected.
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Related Posts:
Intro to the Home Exchange Vacation
How to Stretch a Travel Dollar in Retirement
What a gorgeous room!
Are there many exchanges to Britain, continental Europe and / or Australia or New Zealand? Also, have you ever seen RV exchanges on there? I'd love to do Australia (maybe Europe) via RV, but a home exchange would work too.
Posted by: Jacq | November 30, 2011 at 06:20 AM
Jacq: The problem is not too few listings in those places but too many to sort through. I actually have seen RV exchange listed, but not that often. Maybe there are more than I know, though, since I've never searched for that on the site. You can explore homeexchange.com for free, you should take a look, you will probably be overwhelmed. (The room above is in a 200 year old farmhouse we exchanged for in Vermont last year. Beautiful, isn't it?)
Posted by: Retired Syd | November 30, 2011 at 08:55 AM
Home exchange or house swap may be a little bit scary for beginners. Not only that they are concerned whether all the amenities mentioned in the listing will indeed be available in the house that they will be staying at, but they also have a great deal of concern about the other people staying in their house and using their things. This is the most common apprehensions of many people about home exchanging.
Posted by: Blossom Bucket | August 08, 2012 at 04:57 AM
good......
Posted by: james | July 01, 2014 at 07:57 AM
Home exchange is an alternative way to consider when going on vacation. There are many benefits to this new and exciting vacation style. When you do a holiday house exchange you are basically exchanging lives with another family. Great right? Vacations are usually not very relaxing but when you swap homes it can be.
Posted by: Rikard Ruggiero | February 09, 2015 at 05:27 PM