Exchange Homes For Your Next Vacation
6 October 2006There’s a great idea going around that I heard about on our local radio station - people “trading homes” for their vacations, so that each person can vacation where the other person lives. It essentially lets you eliminate hotel costs on your vacation, saving a ton of money. There are a couple of web sites that act as listing services for people who want to do this, including HomeExchange, ExchangeHomes, and Intervac.
You go to one of these sites, sign up (and usually pay a membership fee), and then you can contact people about their houses all over the world. You can browse the listings for free to see if it’s got something you’re interested in, and they’ve got photos of most of the houses. The upside is that you can turn a $5,000 vacation into a $2,500 one pretty easily.
The downsides? For one, someone random you met off the Internet is going to stay in your house. You should do a little bit of checking up - and you might want to agree with the person you’re exchanging with to let one of your neighbors on each end have a key and check up on the house at set times. Also, they may not meet your standards of cleanliness, may live in an area where it’s difficult to get where you’re going, etc. - you’re not going to have anyone to help you out if something isn’t up to par, like you would in a hotel. Another problem is that if you live in a place that isn’t a popular vacation destination, you may be out of luck. Live in a nice apartment in New York, or in Orlando? People will probably be eager to trade with you. Live in Topeka, Kansas? You won’t have nearly as many choices.
At any rate, it can’t hurt to try given how much money you’d save on your vacation.
Discuss this on the Free the Drones Forums.
One Response to “Exchange Homes For Your Next Vacation”
October 15th, 2006 at 5:16 am
Hi!
Thanks for highlighting the money saving benefits of swapping homes for vacations. Home exchange is much more than a way to save money though and generally involves months of careful planning, getting to know and trust your exchange partners (and they, you), and thus, there are fewer downsides than you might at first think!
I hope you will have a look at my blog about home exchange and that any of your readers with questions will get in touch.