Exchange rates are plummeting. And the rising cost of gas isn’t making domestic
travel look too attractive, either. Does that mean you’re resigned to spending your vacation in the backyard? Not at all. This may, in fact, be the ideal time to consider ditching the traditional hotel stay and looking into a home exchange vacation, instead.

House swapping (aka home exchange), explains Helen Bergstein, founder of the Digsville Home Exchange Club, is an alternative to the traditional house rental or hotel. Instead of paying rent, people use their own property and “swap” their home with another homeowner in their desired destination.

That’s what Robyn and Jim Williams do. The Williamses, who live in Lake Charles, Louisiana, own a vacation home in Crested Butte, Colorado. About 11 years ago, they signed up with the VacationExchange Network and since then have visited Palm Springs, Palm Desert, and Cathedral City, in California; Steamboat Springs, Colorado; and Bend and Brookings, in Oregon. They are currently looking for a home exchange in Italy.

The price of an exchange is far superior to other accommodations, says Robyn, 67. “Besides, we like having a condo instead of a hotel room.”
VacationExchange Network is one of the many companies specializing in home exchanges, but has an added niche that focuses solely on second or vacation home properties.

“It’s easier to arrange exchanges between second-homeowners,” says Alan Miller, vice president of the Whippany, New Jersey-based company. Many people are not comfortable exchanging their primary residence, he explains, adding that vacation home exchanges offer more flexibility since the exchange doesn’t have to be simultaneous.

VacationExchange currently has approximately 1,500 properties listed—from condos to single-family homes—about 1,300 of those are in the U.S. The most popular destinations are, not surprisingly, Hawaii, Colorado and Florida, although, says Miller, “there are beautiful and desirable vacation areas in almost every state.”

Fees for members are reasonable, says Miller. The annual membership fee of $39.95 is waived for the first year; a direct exchange will cost each member $250, while an indirect exchange (you stay in someone’s home, but they don’t stay in yours at the same time) is $500 per week, paid by the member using the other member’s property.

“There’s an obvious financial advantage to this type of vacation,” says Miller, “and it’s also an opportunity to

leverage your property to get the most value from it.”

And in this economic climate, that’s important, says Lillian Jacobs, another VacationExchange Network member. “You get more for your buck,” she says.

Jacobs, 49, who owns a corporate and vacation rental business in Carlsbad, California, has done two exchanges—one in Hawaii and one in Aspen. “You can’t beat the cost,” she says, pointing out that in Aspen, hotel rooms can range from $400 to $700 a night.

Jane Covner, 58, a publicist in Sherman Oaks, California, likes the fact that a home exchange vacation gives you access to everything—down to the aspirin in the medicine chest. “It’s like being in your own home,” she says.

Unlike the Williamses, who exchange their vacation home, Covner and her family exchange the home they live in every day, and have taken two exchange vacations through HomeLink International—one to Quebec City, Canada, and one to Amsterdam—with other primary-homeowners. “The vacations were beyond our wildest dreams,” she says. The Canadian home, for example, had an indoor pool, not to mention a prized in-town parking pass left for them by the doctor/homeowner.

Each exchange lasted three weeks, but Covner says it took about three months to prepare. “It’s a lot of work,” she stresses, from cleaning the house top-to-bottom to exchanging countless emails and calls with the other homeowners. “There’s a lot of research that goes into this type of vacation, on both ends,” says Covner, pointing out that she compiled a handbook for the visitors covering everything from phone numbers for doctors and plumbers to recommendations to their favorite restaurants in the area.

“You really have to do your homework and ask a lot of questions,” says Covner. “Do you want someone, for example, from England, who is used to driving on the

left side of the road, to be driving your car?” Covner also suggests that it is easier to exchange homes with others whose language you understand so there are no misunderstandings.

When Carol Reams first thought about doing a home exchange after reading an article in The Boston Globe, her brother thought she was insane. “But I had just taken my first trip—a three-week tour of China—and found that I loved traveling and wanted to find a cheaper way to continue to take trips. So I thought I would try it once and see how it worked,” says Reams, 57, a visiting nurse on Cape Cod.

Reams took her first home exchange trip to Ireland with three friends and stayed in a four-bedroom house in Dublin. Besides the convenient location—just up the hill from the subway—Reams says, “We had a ball meeting all the locals who wanted to see who Ian and Mary exchanged homes with.”

Since that first trip, Reams, who lists her home through INTERVac, has taken one or two trips a year, sometimes to places she has wanted to visit, and other times to places where someone has first contacted her. She’s been to Hilton Head, South Carolina; New Mexico for the hot air balloon festival; Hawaii; Denver; Sydney, Australia; England; Paris; Copenhagen; and this year, Calgary, Canada, to see the Canadian Rockies.

Just as she tries to take good care of the home she stays in, Reams has found that the exchanging homeowners do the same. “My home has always been left in great condition—clean and well taken care of,” she says.

“What I really like about home exchanges,” says Reams, “is that you get to go to the grocery store, the fruit stand up the street, meet the neighbors, the locals at the pub down the street...you see more of the people who actually live there, not just the hotel desk clerk.”

Vacation exchanges got a boost in popularity with the release of the 2006 film, “The Holiday,” starring Kate Winslet and Cameron Diaz as two lovelorn women who swap homes for the Christmas holiday—and in doing so, find themselves romanced by local men.

And that’s not just Hollywood fluff. According to Digsville’s Helen Bergstein, several of her members have found Mr. Right on their home exchange vacations.

“Fans of house swapping are looking for something more intimate, something that makes them feel like they’re not a tourist, and home exchange does that. You’re home, but in a totally new environment,” says Bergstein. “You feel more comfortable at home, and on some level, that makes it easier to meet people.”

For Bergstein, the advantages of home swapping—romantic and otherwise—are no surprise. Bergstein is herself a lifetime home swapper, and after using other services for a number of years, she launched Digsville.com in 1999.

”We wanted to create something that had an intimacy with our clients, which reflected the home-swapping experience,” she says. To wit, members can connect one-on-one with each other using an internal email program, and former swap partners rate listings.

“By allowing members to interact with each other from the start, people develop a rapport with their exchange partners,” Bergstein says, “and that leads to further connections in their community.

“By the time you get to your new digs,” she adds, “you have a group of people ready to make friends with you.”

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