Tell me about your home exchange experience
October 24, 2024 3:16 PM
I'm starting to look at home exchanges as an alternative for short vacations and trying to decide a) if it's worth it and b) how the various platforms compare. But as always it's hard to weed out the truly objective information from all the dreck online. I'd love any firsthand wisdom and/or experience.
I (and my cat) own a nice 3br/3ba home in a walkable neighborhood of a popular Northwest city. I'd be looking for 1-2 week exchanges, either alone or with a couple of teenagers, in North/South America, Europe or possibly Asia.
First: is it worth it? I understand that with all the fees, home swapping is often a better bargain the longer you're traveling. And there can be a lot of cleaning prep work and cleaning involved.
How do the various platforms compare in terms of network size, fees, support, security, etc? Basically looking for something like this, just updated and with objective reviews.
Are there networks that specialize in (or exclude) pet owners?
What about exchanging cars?
I (and my cat) own a nice 3br/3ba home in a walkable neighborhood of a popular Northwest city. I'd be looking for 1-2 week exchanges, either alone or with a couple of teenagers, in North/South America, Europe or possibly Asia.
First: is it worth it? I understand that with all the fees, home swapping is often a better bargain the longer you're traveling. And there can be a lot of cleaning prep work and cleaning involved.
How do the various platforms compare in terms of network size, fees, support, security, etc? Basically looking for something like this, just updated and with objective reviews.
Are there networks that specialize in (or exclude) pet owners?
What about exchanging cars?
I'm a long-time HomeExchange user but haven't used any other platforms so can't compare. I think it's great; the annual fee is $220 and we typically save thousands of dollars each year, but we are in an area that is very convenient for tourists. For your case, I think it would be well worth it, especially if you are confident that people would like to visit your neighborhood.
But, caveats: It's best if you're flexible and want to stay for extended periods. As you mention, it's a pain to clean up so people prefer long exchanges. (It seems that more people are charging cleaning fees, which is reasonable and isn't an issue for a long stay.) For trips where you're traveling and just spending a day or two at a time, you're unlikely to find much.
It's very hard to find places in big cities, like NYC or London. We messaged around 100 people in London and still didn't get a place.
There are direct exchanges and point exchanges. We have typically exchanged with points, because we don't have a flexible schedule and typically have a destination in mind, although we have done some DC to NYC weekend direct exchanges. But if you are open to location or have a flexible schedule, it would be easier. HomeExchange started in France so has many European locations, so if you just want to go Europe, it would be easy, especially if you're willing to stay in a small town or suburb.
Some people have pets; that is communicated clearly. We ended up cat sitting a few times.
Also, you often can't pick the exact neighborhood or even specific town, which can be annoying or lead to serendipitous fun: You're often going to see the "real" part of town, but it might also be a trek from the center of the city.
We've had excellent experiences with people treating our home well. There's both a self-selection effect and an understanding that people are, literally, sharing their home, so I think the odds of hosting a jerk is smaller than with AirBnB, where people see themselves as paying customers who are entitled to perfection, rather than guests. (There's also a rating system, which helps, but also makes us a little paranoid about cleaning up when we leave someone's house. We've received only 4/5 stars a few times, sometimes for issues like accidentally leaving on a heater, but also a few times for no apparent reason.)
They have an insurance plan to pay for any damages, and if your host cancels they will contact everyone in the area to find an alternative exchange, and give you money for a hotel if they can't find a substitute. For example, once our host family got sick. HomeExchange was able to find a last-minute alternative, but it was a 30 minute drive from where we wanted to be.
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 6:46 AM on October 25
But, caveats: It's best if you're flexible and want to stay for extended periods. As you mention, it's a pain to clean up so people prefer long exchanges. (It seems that more people are charging cleaning fees, which is reasonable and isn't an issue for a long stay.) For trips where you're traveling and just spending a day or two at a time, you're unlikely to find much.
It's very hard to find places in big cities, like NYC or London. We messaged around 100 people in London and still didn't get a place.
There are direct exchanges and point exchanges. We have typically exchanged with points, because we don't have a flexible schedule and typically have a destination in mind, although we have done some DC to NYC weekend direct exchanges. But if you are open to location or have a flexible schedule, it would be easier. HomeExchange started in France so has many European locations, so if you just want to go Europe, it would be easy, especially if you're willing to stay in a small town or suburb.
Some people have pets; that is communicated clearly. We ended up cat sitting a few times.
Also, you often can't pick the exact neighborhood or even specific town, which can be annoying or lead to serendipitous fun: You're often going to see the "real" part of town, but it might also be a trek from the center of the city.
We've had excellent experiences with people treating our home well. There's both a self-selection effect and an understanding that people are, literally, sharing their home, so I think the odds of hosting a jerk is smaller than with AirBnB, where people see themselves as paying customers who are entitled to perfection, rather than guests. (There's also a rating system, which helps, but also makes us a little paranoid about cleaning up when we leave someone's house. We've received only 4/5 stars a few times, sometimes for issues like accidentally leaving on a heater, but also a few times for no apparent reason.)
They have an insurance plan to pay for any damages, and if your host cancels they will contact everyone in the area to find an alternative exchange, and give you money for a hotel if they can't find a substitute. For example, once our host family got sick. HomeExchange was able to find a last-minute alternative, but it was a 30 minute drive from where we wanted to be.
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 6:46 AM on October 25
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Our family members who'd been pressuring us to join forever have a dual membership, so they do it as a sort of two-pronged house swap thing -- they find someone to sit for them, and more often than not, they go and sit at someone else's house wherever they're traveling. They've been doing this for years and love it. We've been doing it for one year, and have had three good experiences with sitters.
You have to pay to join, but after that the sits themselves are free/unpaid. (And I think existing members can give you a discount code of some sort, so LMK if you want one.)
posted by BlahLaLa at 7:45 PM on October 24