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Want to live in a rent-free “home away from home” on your next vacation? A house-swapping club might be just the ticket for you.
Membership in a house-swapping club allows you to live in someone else’s home, free of charge, for a pre-agreed period of time. In exchange, that person, or a third party who also belongs to the club, lives in your home rent-free while you’re away.
House-swapping clubs began about 50 years ago. At that time, membership was limited to a few hundred people around the world, who listed their homes in books. Today, more than 250,000 people from all over the globe swap homes each year through on-line clubs such as homeexchange.com and homelink.org.
Club members enjoy enormous choice of where to go, as well as free, comfortable accommodations where they can settle in for a few weeks, buy groceries and cook for themselves, and even entertain visitors from back home. Seattle resident Hanni recently listed his home with homeexchange.com. He got four offers for swaps in five days: one was a castle in south Germany; another was an apartment near Central Park in Manhattan; a third was a home in Wiesbaden, Germany; and the fourth was an ocean-view home in Brittany. He didn’t know what to choose.
How to start
Most online house-swapping clubs allow you to look at listings of available homes, and even contact homeowners, for free. If you decide to join, membership fees range from $30 to $70 annually. Membership allows you to list a description of your home’s features and the dates it is available while you browse other listings by location, availability and size.
When you find a place you like, you contact the homeowner directly and arrange the dates and times when you will exchange homes. You can even arrange three-way swaps, for greater flexibility.
What you get
In addition to savings on accommodations and food, you may be able to swap cars and save hundreds of dollars in rental fees. Before making arrangements to use your host’s car, make sure you have the proper insurance in place.
Swapping is particularly appealing to families on the go. “We just returned from a great five-week holiday in Great Britain where we did two separate exchanges,” reports Tristen T. on homelink.org. “Both families and houses were terrific and it is definitely the only way to go with kids in tow.”
You also get a different perspective than you do staying in a hotel in a tourist area. Ask your “host” to recommend places to visit, restaurants to try and sights to see.
If you swap
Here are some pointers for arranging a successful swap: