Our home exchange program has been in business for 13 years, and we have arranged thousands of home swaps. We are finding that this economy is inspiring home owners to use their properties in savvy ways, and home swaps are one great example of this — using their own vacation homes to enable them to vacation around the world for a fraction of the cost of traditional travel.

We’d love for you to check out The Vacation Exchange Network. You’ll find a unique home exchange program, where membership is free for the first year, we arrange the exchange for you if you’d like, and you can stay in someone else’s home even if they do not want to stay in your home.

Looking forward to hearing from you!

Jill
The Vacation Exchange Network

There’s also 1st Home Exchange. They have homes for swap in 130 countries. And worth a look at if you are considering France, as they seem to have a rather large selection all over France.

Something to keep in mind is that most of these sites are exclusively home exchange sites and if you try to advertise your home as a rental, they will remove your listing. So make sure your text advertises your home exchange offer an not your rental.

I am so glad to hear that you are using home exchange as a great way to use your vacation rental properties for your own accomodation when travelling during those periods when you are unable to rent them. We all have to make the most of what we have and think creatively, especially during a time of economic downturn worldwide.

I was also pleased to see from her comment that Emily is compiling a list of home exchange sites for her ‘Vacation Rental Resources Guide’. It is a good idea to include only long established agencies with a good reputation as unfortunately there are many start-up sites every year that often disappear without trace a few months later. I would only like to suggest to Emily, and all vacation property owners interested in home exchange, that you also look beyond US based sites. If you are looking for an exchange abroad, it generally pays to look for established agencies based in the country you plan to visit for the best choice of exchange offers there.

Our own home exchange agency, Home Base Holidays, has been operating from London since 1985. We now also operate a home exchange service for the Guardian newspaper group, providing even more attractive exchange offers throughout the UK and worldwide. With the pound sterling dropping dramatically in value against other currencies, including the US dollar, in the last few weeks (very alarming if you live here!), this is a great time to arrange an exchange to the UK.

I also publish a blog, Travel the Home Exchange Way, for regular information about home exchange. I will include a link to your post on the blog shortly as I believe your ideas on using vacation rental properties for exchange will be of interest to some of our visitors and members. If you, or any of your readers, have ideas for other ways we might cross promote rentals and home exchange, I would be delighted to hear from you.

Cheers,
Lois Sealey
Home Base Holiays, London

I enjoyed reading your post about using a “home exchange” to fill open weeks at your vacation rentals. Which, by the way, are gorgeous. Your photos are good enough to grace the pages of National Geographic or Coastal Living!

I’d be interested to know if you (and other readers of this blog) have a favorite home-exchange site to recommend — one that you’ve used and have found to be especially good.

We’re putting together a list of home-exchange sites for our FullyBookedRentals “Vacation Rental Resources Guide” (http://www.vacationrentalresources.com) and would love to get your opinion, based on first-hand experience.

Here’s our current list of established home-exchange sites that get good reviews:

o ExchangeHomes (http://www.exchangehomes.com)
o HomeExchange (http://www.homeexchange.com)
o iTravex (http://www.itravex.com)
o Seniors Home Exchange (http://www.seniorshomeexchange.com)
o Vacation Exchange Network (http://www.thevacationexchange.com)
o Sabbatical Homes (http://www.sabbaticalhomes.com)

Anyone have experiences to report with these sites (good, bad, or indifferent), or have others to recommend?

Cheers,
Emily Glossbrenner
FullyBookedRentals
http://www.fullybookedrentals.com

For those of you that decide to rent your vacation home rentals at discounted prices, look for vacation rental websites that allow you to post an “Owner’s Special”, or something like that. For example, on our vacation rental website, we have a special feature that allows vacation rental owners to post owner’s specials on a special section on our site. If you decide to run an owner’s special, make sure you put phrases in all of your online advertisements such as “discount vacation rentals” or “cheap vacation rentals”. While those terms may not have the best sound, they are very popular search terms on Google, and you will increase your exposure through Google if you use those terms in your online ad description text. I wrote a post on this blog about that topic here.

Jon Ludwig
Owner, FindVacationRentals.com