Home Exchange Vacations Offer Unique & Free Lodging

Hi Darlene Thanks for publishing an excellent and very postive article about home exchange. If you or any of your readers are interested in finding out more about home exchanges, and how to arrange them, I hope you will visit my blog, Travel the Home Exchange Way, which I update regularly, with posts on various aspects of swapping homes: http://homeexchangetravel.blogs.com Cheers, Lois

Hi Lois, thanks for your comment.  I for sure would like to find out more about home exchanges and how to arrange them, so I will certainly visit your blog. I would like to try a home exchange vacation myself so that I can write a review or personal experience for the benefit of my readers.  If you or anyone of your readers would like to share their home exchange vacation experiences with us, we would be thrilled.  You could use the comment form or the "share your adventures" link in the sidebar. Thanks.  And Happy Swapping! 

Hi Darlene,

As you mentioned in your article, there are several home exchange organizations out there. Actually, there are more than several. Lois' excellent swap club, Home Base Holidays is one of more than 60 home exchanges reviewed and rated on Know Your Trade. In fact, Home Base Holidays was chosen the very first Treasure of the Month. This new site, http://www.knowyourtrade.com, was created to demystify the home exchange process. A few people have shared experiences in our forum. We are looking for more. Take a look to see all we have to offer.
Leslie, the Exchange Queen

Know Your Trade is an excellent site.  I urge everyone interested in Home Exchange to check it out.  They even recommend my home exchange blog: http://homeexchanger.blogspot.com/  I offer lots of tips on setting up a great home exchange and it's a completely non-commercial site (not a home exchange club marketing tool).

Know Your Trade is an excellent site for anyone getting into home exchange.  They even recommend my blog, Home Exchange Travels at http://homeexchanger.blogspot.com/   I offer lots of tips and advice for setting up the perfect swap and travel with kids and seniors.  My blog is not part of a home exchange club so I give you my unvarnished opinion!

Great Post! With all the media coverage, suddenly, Home Exchange is the new business to get into. Normally fresh new competition is good for an industry but maybe not so in this case. In order to quickly build up number many of the new clubs are offering free memberships. Without having to process a payment, this means that they have absolutely no recourse as to who their members actually are. Another caution, don't be fooled by the high membership number published by some clubs. Many of them inflate their numbers by accepting large numbers of straight RENTALS, the owners of which never have the slightest intention of participating in a home exchange. Is this ethical? Judge for yourself.

Hi Anne, Thanks for pointing out the precautions that need to be taken.  We always advise our readers to do their homework well and in the case of home exchanges it is essential since you would be allowing people you have never met before into your home. If anyone has a positive (or negative) experience with a home exchange club, please share it with us for the benefit of all home swappers.  We all want affordable and enjoyable vacations and we can help each other achieve just that by pointing out and recommending the GOOD home exchange clubs and warning against the "not so good" ones!   Thanks for all your wonderful comments—Keep them coming! 

I have heard of this before, but not at a zero cost or free lodging as put in this article. I guess if you have a few homes that you only use as vacation homes this might work very well, especially if you have minimal items just to keep it looking nice. Since you are swapping with other home owners I could not imagine a whole lot of risk, however, swapping cars too. I do not know of many insurance policies that cover someone else driving your car, so that would be risky. 

With reference to the above comment by attagirl – you don't have to own several homes in order to enjoy the zero costs of a home exchange. The majority of our members very successfully exchange their family residence, many of them achieve great exchanges repeatedly. There is never any cost involved.  Please take a look at our ExchangeHomesBlog  which goes into many of the aspects of locating and setting up successful home exchanges. Anne 

I think home swapping sounds a great idea, but I don´t think I could ever pluck up the courage to do this!  I´d be frightened that the visitor would not respect my home and maybe wreck it.  I know people have villas and rent them as holiday homes, which I think is a little different because they don´t live in them once the holiday makers have gone.