The main doubt when we talk about house swapping is related to confidence and trust.
How can I trust someone I don’t know and exchange my house?

The magic trick is here: we have to become familiar with our swappers so that they won’t be strangers anymore.

HOW?

C o m m u n i c a t i n g !

Communication: the key for a successful home exchange

Well, I guess that in the telecommunications and virtual dialogues era this won’t be very difficult. We have plenty of means to communicate, to exchange information, words, photos, experiences, opinions.

We can write, talk and see each other. By and a (webcam) we can also have a virtual tour through the other house.

When we get or send an offer to someone’s house, we can start exchanging letters or postcards. Once the address is confirmed, at our leisure, we’ll begin to build confidence with our possible home swappers. We can also prefer the quicker e-mails.

Casitas dels pins - Esther Fuldauer

Home exchanges gave birth to many new friendships.

At first strangers, house swappers become acquaintances and then friends. Living in the respective houses for a while will add a touch of specialness and confidence to our friendship.

We can exchange details and photos of our houses and the surroundings, make questions, solve any doubts, get suggestions about possible trips, venues, pubs, theatres, cinemas, things to do… During this exchange full of everything we’ll surely have the time and the possibility to see if these people are good for us, if we can trust them, if we like them (and if they like us).

In most cases you won’t wait for long before finding the most suitable home exchange.

After this process, in fact, all the conditions, the exchange type, the availability of the house, how and when exchanging our houses have to be decided by the two owners (or tenants).

For this reason we recommend to get in touch with the other owner and make him the offer we’re most interested in. It’s very likely that, if we communicate and build a good relationship, there won’t be any kind of problems during our home exchange.

In a home exchange there isn’t any money transaction, so that it can’t be considered as a sublet.

It’s as if you were inviting some friends to stay at your place, thing that every tenant has the right to do. So the house swapping option is good also for who doesn’t own a house.

Tenants too will therefore be able to benefit from house swap advantages:

• Accommodation cost zeroing;
• Possibility of preparing meals comfortably at home (with the additional option of a typical food exchange);
• Possibility of exchanging cars and therefore saving even more money;
• See the city from the inhabitants “inside” point of view;
• Not having timetables for breakfast, lunch, dinner, leaving the house;
• Chance to get a bigger or more expensive house than ours;
• Possibility of bringing along our pets;
• …

In tenants’ case what we could suggest is asking, anyway and for reasons of courtesy and politeness, to our landlord if he/she is fine with the home exchange.

Just to be on the safe side.

Hi everybody. Here we are again with Maria’s story about her home exchange Catania-Trondheim.
“During the two weeks we spent in Norway, we travelled a lot by car to explore the -until then- unknown area. Used to the warm Sicily, those landscapes of fiords and mountains seemed quite surreal. During the first weekend we visited some fiords with Grethe’s cousin, who kindly passed by one day to see if everything was ok and in the end became our tourist guide. The nature in Norway is amazing, touching: forests, mountains, glaciers, waterfalls and rivers had something different we had never seen before. We saw also some reindeers and elks. In a natural park then we crossed some wolfs, eagles and musk oxes. Only whales were missing, otherwise Angelo and I would have seen all the Norwegian fauna!”

We can definitely say that Maria and her husband enjoyed very much their home exchange.
“The experience was a unique one as long as it lasted. Staying at real Norwegians’ place gave a particular meaning to the whole thing. We felt as if we belonged to the place and I don’t think this would happen sleeping in some hotel’s room. This is something we heartily recommend. By the way, when we came back we found a nice card on our table from the Ibsons: they thanked us for the beautiful holidays, people’s kindness and the charm of Sicily. The house was as tidy and clean as we left it”.
Thanks Maria for your story!
Stay tuned!

The Coccolo family sent us the story of their memorable home exchange.

Catania, Italy

Trondheim, Norwey

They had put on-line the ad of their flat in Catania, curious about the possibility of swapping house with people from different countries. The day after they already received an offer by a Norwegian family that was desirous of sun and Sicily.

At the beginning they were quite doubtful about the whole thing, ‘cause they didn’t know how to trust someone they didn’t know. So they started to exchange letters, then e-mails, then they spoke using Skype. They soon became friendly with the Ibsen family –that was quite familiar with house swaps instead- thanks to some similarities between Maria and Grethe, 35 and 34 respectively.

The Ibsens were in need of sun and history and the Coccolo family wanted to visit unusual landscapes and the famous fiords.

At a cartain point they felt they could trust each other so that they planned a home exchange from the 15th to the 30th of May 2008 (wonderful timing by the way, since in Norwey the sun doesn’t goes down and in Sicily it’s warm enough -but not too hot- to enjoy the marvelous Catania and the beaches all around).

“The vision of the midnight sun”, Maria says, “is something incredible. Not seeing the going down of the sun is somehow puzzling, but it has something amazing and special in it…Like a sense of unreachable eternity.

The Ibsen house was clean, tidy, and cosy: two bedrooms, a big bathroom and a comfortable kitchen where we could cook when we didn’t get out of Trondheim. By the way, we had also decided to exchange our cars so that we went around Norway easily and without wasting a lot of money in hiring a car. We saw so many natural beauties…”.

Maria’s story continues with interesting details about typical Norwegian food, landscapes, flora and fauna…

Ha det (goodbye in Norwegian)!

Normally holidays and savings don’t get on well.

In the home exchange case things are different. Many people don’t exchange their house because of money but for fun, adventure, amusement, excitement, to know new people…

Whatever may be the reason, the saving we get on the total cost of our holiday is important and worth taking into account, especially for those family that normally can’t afford a good vacation because of its cost.

House swapping gives us a lot of advantages.

Even though we could get quite a few accommodation options (hotels, hostels, B&B, camping…), they all have a cost.

The accommodation cost in a house swapping instead is ZERO.

Saving money...

Let’s do a trial.

I’ll look for a hotel -let’s say in Paris- for two people. How much will it cost?

Number of people: 2

Nights: 5 (from 1st of December)

Area: let’s try with… Champs Elisée? I choose just one of the many options. A French hotels search engine (http://www.hotels-paris.fr) tells me that it will show me the best offers.

I get more than 40 sorted by offer price. The cheapest is 395€ with a 47% discount, otherwise it would have cost so much as 745€! The second available offer climbs to 435€ and both the offers were for two stars hotels, breakfast NOT included. Immediately they push up the bidding to 800€ or more for 3 stars hotels (not even 4).

Do your accounts. Doing a home exchange would make us SAVE A LOT OF MONEY. As a minimum, in this case, we could save 395€…But apart from this aspect we have to consider the “food-aspect”. Rather than going out every day to have lunch or dinner we could stay at home and making our own meal. Maybe we won’t have everything ready and waiting, but the saving offered by the house swapping is huge and evident. And also welcome, given the crisis we’re passing through.

It is estimated that the value of the average saving for a numerous family could be of 1000€, comparing house swapping to the other available options.

Consider that the only cost you have is the journey. Once there, you would spend as if you were at home.

Not bad. Shall we plan a home exchange then?

Home swapping is quite exciting. Obviously if you have a house on the seashore o in the coolest area of the city you’ll receive more home exchange offers. This fact, however, doesn’t imply that a simple, small flat in a non touristic area won’t be given visibility in HomeForHome.com or won’t receive any offers.

House swapping is so exciting just because everyone can propose a home exchange and all types of houses and flats are accepted and welcome.

The house swap advantages are many: economic but also related to personal growth. You can discover a new country, a new city, different habits, a different point of view, other tastes, a diverse reading, another listening…All through the perspective offered by someone else’s house.

I’d like to add that in fact there are a lot of people with mansion houses or villas or luxury flats that only looks for a change or a place where they can have a relaxing break, far away from their normal routine. Consequently even a gold brick house can potentially receive offers from king’s ransom houses. The debate on a house value could last forever if we referred to the emotional value that a house can have for its owners…

Are there for real houses better than others?

What I know for sure is that the sense of comfort and belonging given by a real house can’t be given by any other accommodation.

A small but cosy house in the mountains

A bigger villa

Whatever you think, surprises are guaranteed during a home swap!

What happens if I have pets?

We can find some pet friendly hotels where animals are admitted and welcome. But this is not the rule, rather the exception and all those nice services of dog sitting, special food, animal activities have a cost.
If we love our pets o we simply consider them as a part of our family maybe the hotel is not the best option.

Home swapping instead could be the answer: a home away from home is right there, waiting not only for you but also for your pets.

In each offer we clearly specify if pets are admitted. And obviously where animals are welcome we can bring them along without any additional cost. So apart from saving the hotel cost (which is quite a lot of money) we can happily go on holidays with our pets. Our dog, our cat will be really pleased of going to a new place where it can also have a good, peaceful nap if we decide to go out for some special occasions.

Our cats

Cute dog

Another possible option would be that of exchanging pets…That is: taking care of our swappers’ pets while they look after ours. If we both agree and we are both used to pets and we know how to feed them properly and how to make them feel at ease and safe…Well, the thing is easy and probably also optimal for the animal in question since they can comfortably stay at home (especially in case of a long journey where they would possibly suffer a little…).

Isn’t that great?

The trust rule.

Trust is a perpetual changing concept. Daily we get more and more options, technologies, choices: the increasing complexity of our world makes harder trusting something or someone. Not that we don’t have anyone or anything to trust: it’s just that the options are…too many.
House swapping is different…It is a trustworthy concept.
Think simply that the people we are swapping our house with will let us their home too.
And home is only one: it has an important emotional value as well as an economic one.
If they give us their home why not having trust? I’ll give mine in exchange.

Focus on the fact that when our swappers stay in our house, we stay in theirs. For that reason we’ll look after their house in the same way we would like them to take care of ours.

Nobody so far has complained about the state of the house when coming back from a home exchange.
Exchanging our house with someone else is an act of mutual trust worth considering.

It is an intelligent choice that makes us save money and enjoy our holidays in a new city from a different point of view…The “native” point of view. It’s as if the home exchange gave us the opportunity of having…a second life!

Home Exchange: Getting Two Lives and trust.

Let’s have trust!
I’ll swap my house.

While you exchange your house do you exchange cars too?

About half people exchange cars during a home swap, but it is entirely up to you. If you want to, if you need to, if you think it is opportune…

I can tell you that the convenience is absolutely sure and evident. I’m going to show you why…

Give a look to the prices reported below…

I checked on a couple of web sites the prices you get when you want to hire a car: I verified the cost of a reservation in three different countries (Italy, Spain and USA) during a period of 7 days.

What I found…

Small car

Bigger car

Big car

Car rental offers examples:

Making a reservation on-line with a car rental agency (Budget) Italy seems to be more expensive than Spain considering the same 7 days time and the same car type.
For instance, hiring a car can fluctuate from 187€ to 275 € in Florence while in Barcelona you get it for a price that varies from 118€ to 159€ (in my “experiment”: from 22 to 29 of October).
Getting a car in the United States, let’s say at JFK New York airport, would cost even more: the 7 days option in October (variable car size) costs from 411 to 434 €!

…Plus the petrol…

Checking the reservation of the same car for the same destinations (to the same hiring conditions) with Hertz, the cheapest options are:
• 151.21 €, to hire a car in Barcelona
• 186 € for Florence
• 231.44 € looking for a car to hire in New York City, JFK Airport.

I would definitely suggest that when we exchange our house it would be very convenient exchanging cars too.
This would be a further and considerable save of money on the global cost of our vacations.

Luckily, in the end, we still can find some ways to save money without giving up the pleasure of holidays and relax!

Stay tuned, further advice about how to be comfortable and happy during your home swap holiday is coming soon!

When we do a home exchange there is only one rule: leave the house or the flat as we found it.
This seems a well-advised rule under the sign of mutual respect and good manners.
But when we swap our house with someone what happens to the food?
Did you think about it? Leaving the fridge empty is quite easy (one has just to eat everything! ;)), but what about our feed in the cupboard?

Our cupboard...

No rules have been written about that (like: “it is forbidden to touch the food!” “stay away from my supplies!”,”Do not eat my chocolate!”, etc.), though one could think of doing it.
Personally I think that it’s much better not having written rules and following the good common sense… Besides how much food can we accumulate? Tons?!? I don’t really think so…
However…If we focus on how much we’ll save in hotels thanks to the home swapping it will be anyway a good deal (also because we’re going to eat our swappers’ feed).
Rather I would suggest that a food exchange could be extremely interesting (and obviously tasty!)
An option could be that of giving free access to our “ordinary” supplies (only if there’s a mutual agreement between the two families) or we could think of something more original instead.
What would you think of preparing a typical food tasting (of your area or country)?
When could we have a better occasion to know the gastronomic tradition of a region?
Think about it…Going to a stranger land, staying in a real house instead of a hotel room and finding on the table (or in the fridge…) a taste of typical food of the place, selected and suggested by “native people”. And, above all, without spending as much as we would if we went to a fleecing restaurant for tourists or in a very expensive gourmet shop…
This little gesture would assure an original taste of the food of the area, directly selected by its people and, therefore (nearly 100% sure), “on the beam”.

Think if to the family who’s coming to our place we left a black pudding (without telling them exactly what it is…;) ).

Black pudding

Or if the Spanish family where we’re going to left us a succulent “butifarra”?

Butifarra

Or a delicious “ensaimada”?

Ensaimada de Mallorca

What if our Italian family left for us a soft “pandoro veronese”…?

Pandoro veronese

Or a mouth-watering “pastiera napoletana”?

Pastiera

…Or a “polenta”?

Polenta trentina

Or…?

Wouldn’t it be original and somehow amusing? A food exchange.
And the same could be done with wine, beer, seasonal fruit (all things that last for some time)…
What do you think about this idea?

And what about you? What would you leave to the family you are going to swap your home with?
How would your welcome taste be?

Let me know!
Cheers,