eslrachel

has anyone ever exchanged a vacation home through one of the homeswap sites?i would be interested in hearing peoples experiences.my family will be going to northern spain from june 22 to july 25 and i am thinking of doing thistype of thing.i own a small,unprtentious (or should i write cosy,comfortable)little vacation house in cape cod...i would like to exchange that for say a week in bilbao or salamanca or madrid.

kybourbon

Try the search function. There are numerous home exchange posts.

di2315

Hi Eslrachel

We have been very happy with all of our home exchanges, and have certainly visited some parts of the world that we probably wouldn't have considered, but for offers of exchange that were made to us.

My advice for selecting a homeswap site is to Google 'home exchange' and 'home swap', then take a careful look at what's on offer. Generally you can go in as a 'visitor' to the site (as distinct from a member), and see everything about each property except the actual contact details.

I looked for homes / families interested in swapping with my home area, as well as what was available for me to exchange into.

It's not a form of accommodation that suits everyone, but I'm really pleased that we took the chance; it has opened up new places to us, and we have made several lasting international friendships out of the process.

Happy travels, Di

Sarvowinner

This is the definitive thread on home exchanging:

http://tinyurl.com/28f6sj

yeadonite

Someone who post here Lauren Kahn was just on CNN today talking about home exchanges! It was fun to match a name with the face. She is the resident expert.

My dad and I have done many you can read his reports
Amsterdam
http://www.fodors.com/forums/threads...p;tid=34446065


Sweden
http://www.fodors.com/forums/threads...p;tid=34505616

Paris
http://www.fodors.com/forums/threads
elect.jsp?fid=2&tid=34547346

London
http://www.fodors.com/forums/threads...p;tid=34492363

djkbooks

Here's the CNN spot

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/liv...house.swap.cnn

LaurenKahn1

That was me on CNN. I have now had my 5 seconds of fame and I do hope it encouraged some folks to try exchanging. I am currently on my 35th home exchange in Kawana Waters, Australia, north of Brisbane. I will move to Brisbane for my second home exchange in about a week. My third home exchange in this series is in the Bay of the Islands area in New Zealand. On this trip, I will be gone over 2 months--much longer than normal. CNN was only interested in featuring the first set of exchangers with me in the piece. The man from the second set is seen sitting outside by the pool with me at the place north of Brisbane. He and his wife were nice enough to transport me from the airport to the apartment (they have a child and grandchildren living nearby) and, despite my best efforts, CNN was not interested. To be fair to CNN, they had only 2 minutes and 31 seconds for the whole piece so some limits had to be set. I even saw the piece in Australia. Amazing!

This series of exchanges are numbers 35, 36 and 37 for me. I still espouse the philosophy that he who goes the farthest for the least amount of money wins. I did, by the way, stop in Fiji and Sydney on the way out. It is quite a trip!

The trip reports are on independenttraveler.com for anyone who is interested.