Home Exchanges

H

Hansen

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I’m thinking of going down the road of home exchange as a money saving measure for family holidays- do any of you have any experience(s) in this or advice to share?

I’d like to think it’s a way to invest in upgrading our own home and get to experience nicer destinations with the kids, or am I being naive here? Thanks
 
Did it many years ago, had very successful holidays.

Pack away anything you'd be sorry to have broken or damaged. Folks are generally very respectful, but accidents happen to the best of us.

Clean your house to within an inch of its life, fix up all those small jobs you've been overlooking.

Be clear on house rules (smoking / pets) and ideally have a friendly neighbour on hand who can call in and if necessary help with any questions.
 
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Hansen said:
I’m thinking of going down the road of home exchange as a money saving measure for family holidays- do any of you have any experience(s) in this or advice to share?
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We considered it but the amount of cleaning and repair/storage we would have had to engage in put us off. However, friends who had moved to the continent and who had 'Marie Kondo'd' their possessions and moved into a pristine property, engaged in home swaps around the world, with mixed success; not everyone had cleaned/cleared their properties to the same extent and not everyone left their property in the same condition our friends had left it to them! Mixed bag but, overall, they got on OK but don't do it now, but they might do it again!!
 
Ive always fancied doing this. But then I look at the cupboards and wardrobes and the important stuff we’d want to move away and I get put off it. I suppose you could lock one room? That might limit your options though.

I wouldn’t worry about clothes being in a wardrobe, but you’d need to leave space for them to hang their stuff, drawers likewise. We have a few valuable musical instruments that we’d have to store somewhere.

But compared to say renting a house for 2 weeks somewhere… it’s probably worth it.
 
ClubMan said:
How so if it's presumably an exchange/barter rather than a financial transaction?
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An exchange of course, but instead of putting money into accommodation abroad I’d like to think we d upgrade certain things in our home instead which would be good for us and make our home a more attractive option for a home exchange
 
Thank you for this, glad to hear it’s a positive route, and thanks for the practical advice!
 
Thank you for your reply, good to know the possible pitfalls too, and to weigh up the work involved
 
Loads of people would exchange homes for holidays . . . if . . . if . . .if. Just do it, we did and you’ll save a fortune and get better than a package holiday. There are loads of excuses not to do something; don’t make a big deal out of something so easy and rewarding.
 
We d have a few small bits to do but I’m thinking that that would only benefit ourselves in the long run and we’d save a bit on extortionate high season holiday costs
 
Thank you for your reply, where did you exchange to if you don’t mind me asking?
 
We have done this more than 10 times, I highly recommend it, especially with kids.

DannyBoyD said:
Pack away anything you'd be sorry to have broken or damaged. Folks are generally very respectful, but accidents happen to the best of us.
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+1

DannyBoyD said:
Clean your house to within an inch of its life, fix up all those small jobs you've been overlooking.
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My wife does this I have never seen the point in going beyond a basic clean/tidy up.

The houses we go to vary from really scrubbed to a bit grubby, and guess what, after the first 10 minutes it makes no difference to our holiday.

Never any issue with our house on return, occasionally my wife thinks it is not as clean as we left it, but that's the worst we have experienced.

It's a no-brainer in my opinion.
 
We have considered it. Again lack of time to do the things we would want to to our house put us off, but we would be the main beneficiaries of that so we should really just do it. And the deadline to do a declutter would certainly be helpful! As we can both work remotely within certain limits and our kids are old enough to attend camps while away, it would certainly allow us to lengthen the amount of time we could be away. It's on the list for next year.
 
Thanks so much, what destinations have you visited if you don’t mind me asking?
 
We did it also for years, we also exchanged cars

Adding a named driver on our insurance policy was very inexpensive
 
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