Vacation like there is no recession is the unofficial motto of HomeExchange.com, which as 26,000 listings for homes you can swap with yours. Home swapping is cheaper than a hotel and is becoming trendy for weekend getaways and events, like a wedding, alumni football game, or parent’s weekend at college.
Home Exchange lets you search its listings, though completing a transaction requires membership. A silver membership costs $100 for one year. Use code BB2009 – special for Bargain Babe readers – to get 25% off. Expires March 31, 2009. If you do not complete an exchange within your first year, the second year is free.
Browse all listings by country. The US has by far the most, with 10,126 listings, when I checked. If you want to go on a ski vacation, here is a home in Park City, Utah that is 1/2 mile from a ski resort. Or maybe you want to visit Yellowstone National Park but prefer a hard roof in Cody, WY over camping.
For a far flung vacation, consider these two listings for Placencia Village in Belize. Or browse Home Exchange’s top 10 destinations. For more about how exchanging homes works, read their FAQs.
March 4th, 2009 at 10:16 am
[...] Bargain Babe » Forget hotels. Exchange homes to save on vacations [...]
March 4th, 2009 at 1:09 pm
We’ve been listed on HomeExchange.com for a couple of years and have completed 4 swaps and have one scheduled for April. Just this week, I got an email from someone wanting to swap in the summer in Thailand and I got one today someone wanting to do a swap in Mammoth.
It’s a wonderful money saver. I have a long list of positives, but in terms of “cost” it cost a lot more in terms of time. You have to list your house, which, if done right can time quite a bit of time to find the right web site for your needs. Then taking pix of your home looking awesome. You also need to send out tons of emails and vet the incoming ones. Lastly, you have to have your house nicely kept up and leave it in great shape, all while packing and getting ready to leave for your own vacation. Then on the way back, you need to leave their place nice and tidy as well.
We think of it as making our house and the money we’ve put into it work *for* us. Instead of being “house poor,” we’re vacation rich!
March 5th, 2009 at 11:27 am
Home exchanging is a wonderful idea. It seems difficult to coordinate though. How do you plan a vacation based on someone else and their vacation plans?
March 5th, 2009 at 4:30 pm
We did a home exchange last summer and it was great! While I agree it took a lot of time to prepare for our guests and leave their place better than when we arrived, I’d do it again in a heartbeat. Our only costs were what we’d spend at home – food, transportation, a little entertainment. (We earned our plane tickets on our credit card program) HomeExchange.com had all the great letters and forms we needed to make everything go smoothly.
March 5th, 2009 at 9:09 pm
[...] Exchange homes to save money [...]
March 7th, 2009 at 6:37 pm
[...] Bargain Babe suggests we trade homes to save on vacation costs. [...]
March 8th, 2009 at 10:46 pm
thanks !! very helpful post!
March 18th, 2009 at 1:27 pm
[...] It’s already impossible for my husband to agree to allow someone in to feed the dogs or cat although we have lots of friends who would be willing. Instead, we have to board them at $30 a pop p/day for a week. It would take nothing short of a miracle to get my husband to trade a home for a week for vacation… something people from across the world have done which saves them thousands of dollars. At Bargain Babe’s site, there are links to home exchange platforms where would-be vacationers … [...]
March 25th, 2009 at 8:33 pm
Really nice site. Great post too.
April 16th, 2009 at 12:35 pm
I am going to have to sign up to receive your feed. This is good stuff
April 17th, 2009 at 3:26 pm
We’ve done two swaps since I wrote my earlier post. One to Mamoth Lakes. We stayed in a beautiful LARGE home. We invited some friends along. It was a blast and my son learned to ski. Probably wouldn’t have done it if it weren’t for the swap.
Then we were home for a few days, then off to San Francisco for a week-long swap up there. We were in a modest apartment, but in the heart of SF. There is no way we would have been able to do *both* in one month, were it not for the swaps.
I got an email from someone requesting a long weekend swap for San Diego in the summer, which we will most likely do.
Just stories to encourage y’all!