Friends of mine want to do a home exchange for their apartment in Sydney for a place in Tuscany/Umbria areas. Has anyone done this or know of a company who they could do it through?

Check out ExchangeHomes.com <http://www.exchangehomes.com/>. I have heard of them but have not used them. Hope this helps.

Darn! Why does it have to be Sydney?
When do they want to do this?

Hi Pereralan

We have used Intervac Home Exchange(www.intervac.com) for several years, and had very happy and memorable exchanges.

If you Google 'home exchange' or 'home swap', then there are a number of websites that come up. As with all things, you need to check carefully through what's available, and decide which website is going to offer what you are looking for.

There's a small cost involved to submit your details, then from then on, everything is organised between the two homes, without any input from the webpage organisers.

Hope this is helpful for your friends, Cheers, Di

Thanks everyone, I'll pass on your suggestions. Liz, they will not be going till this time next year and it is their intention to buy something but want to stay in various places till they decide on something. They have put a request on the web themselves but the only response they got was from Seattle!

Peteralan, I was actually looking at some sites myself for exactly the same reason a little while ago and put my place on the website and have not had one reply. Probably because no one wanted to have as much work to do in my place - which was the reason I needed a holiday from it. I got a book out of the library a couple of weeks ago about house exchanging and it had a lot of websites in it and also a lot of other information too so if you have a look in your local library you may get lucky.

My father-in-law and his wife use www.homeexchange.com and have been very happy with their experiences. As a matter of fact, they are swapping their home in NM with a couple from Ontario in a couple of weeks.

Lee Ann

Thanks everyone for the suggestions.