Advantages/disadvantages of home exhange?

April 5, 2010 5:11 PM

We are interested in swapping our home, in Toronto, both for short-term and long-term visits in the future. Big cities pretty much anywhere in the world are of interest. We would be very happy to swap for an apartment in such cities as New York, or Paris, where getting a house is pretty unlikely. Which websites can you highly recommend? Which should we avoid? I'm very interested in hearing your bad/good experiences that we can learn from, as well. What advice would you give us?
posted by uans to Travel & Transportation (5 answers total)

Have you seen this article yet?
posted by foxjacket at 5:36 PM on April 5, 2010

I just signed up for Air Bed & Breakfast and have already gotten a lot of responses. http://www.airbnb.com/ Will be trying it out for the first time later this month!
posted by timoni at 5:49 PM on April 5, 2010

Response by poster: Thanks, foxjacket--however we do have a house to offer. Good information here, though.
posted by uans at 7:57 PM on April 5, 2010

My family has done home exchanges and generally started by looking in local colleges and universities for faculty who needed a place to stay for a sabbatical. I know they've also used websites more recently, but I don't know specifics.
posted by sciencegeek at 4:47 AM on April 6, 2010

Pretty sure my dad uses homelink. He lives in the middle of nowhere, but has been all over the world swapping houses.
posted by kenbennedy at 8:15 AM on April 6, 2010