We do not write about this option very often, but students can become an important force in the swapping world. Mobility programs abide and there’s no better way to solve the accommodation problem than to swap houses with a student coming to your city (does not need to be to the same University).

We have the Study exchanges forum for people who specifically want to swap houses driven by academic related motives. Right now, there are mostly offers of people looking for an opportunity to improve their skills in a foreign language by experiencing it first hand, living as a local - one thing home exchange is perfect for. But, you can expand this and swap houses while you take a semester or a post-graduate program in another country. If you find the right partner you won’t have to sub-let your place, it will be taken care of, and you’ll have a home away from home without spending any extra money. It also works for teachers, professors and researchers!

Image: renjith krishnan / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Anyone can see that there are many home swappers looking for opportunities to visit different cities and regions, specially around the holiday season. You just need to visit the Exchange Requests forum where, for example last week there were over 30 new topics with the most varied offers. From people in Rome looking for a swap partner in Barcelona, to people offering their house for next Easter! That’s right, our swappers are planning way ahead and we would encourage anyone to follow that same path.

On the other hand, there is also a lot of activity in the “last minute deal” type of house swap, with many users trying to arrange short, weekend exchanges around November 2nd (All Souls’ Day). As we always say, in HomeForHome there’s something for every taste

Following our motto of the previous posts, we need to add that no matter where you go, there should always be music in the background to turn any moment into a special moment.

Image: Public domain image taken from Wikimedia Commons (author: Drozd).

Today we found something interesting that could be appealing to many of our readers now that we are about to change seasons. What if you could enjoy the sun in any season? Does this get your attention? Well, today, a user has posted an offer in several of the forum topics under the title “Enjoy the sun in any season“, and we thought it might just be a good thing to give it a gentle push by posting the details in our blog as well.

Ner is a user from Roquetas de Mar in Almeria (Spain), an area described as warm in the winter and hot in the summer. If you are wondering why would someone leave warm paradise to spend the winter elsewhere, well, Ner wants to stay for at least three months in an English speaking country to learn English, so if you have a home to exchange where Ner can practice English on a daily basis, don’t hesitate to get in touch. You could be spending part of the winter in an apartment near Playa Serena beach:

Image: one of Ner house’s photos in HomeForHome.

After taking a quick glance at the activity in our community forums during this past week, it is safe to say that it is still very active and a tool our swappers are using more and more each day to find home exchange opportunities, to make specific offers and also to share their experiences, both good and bad. Luckily, the count is in favor of the positive experiences, that outscore the negative ones by far.

It is also noticeable that English speaking users are less active that other house swappers, so we want to encourage you to get involved and participate, even if you are not looking for an exchange right now, if you build a strong net of contacts using the forum it will help you find trustworthy counterparts more easily in the future and will show people you are a serious possible partner. Plus, it is fun and it doesn’t take a lot of time. Give it a try!

Image: Public domain licence, taken from Wikimedia Commons.

A few days ago we were showing you how to hide your home from the search engine when you are not looking for new home exchange opportunities, but by no means this is what most of our users will do these days… Have you checked the Community forum lately? There is a lot of activity in the different topics, specially those about “Exchange Requests”, with new offers being published daily. Fourteen topics were started only yesterday and one of the got over 8000 hits! Wow!

Weekend exchanges, offers for July, August, and September, and swappers already trying to make plans for Christmas and New Year’s Day… Many keyboards are getting action these days, what about yours? Are you going to stay silent?

Do not let the language be a problem, remember that there are online translation tools, like Google Translate, that can help you get an idea of what the other user is trying to say and you can check a person’s profile to see if they understand English to write them a direct message. Dive in!

Almost ending July, many of our users have exchanged houses during the summer time or are about to do so. It is by far the most active time of the year and you have probably been part of it, either sending or receiving home exchange requests or just contacting other users to see if they are interested in exchanging home with you. What happens when you already “booked” the swap you were looking for? There are many options you can use to tell other users your home is no longer available: 1) change the availability calendar, 2) add  a note to your profile and/or home description, and 3) hide your home.

We have discussed the first two options before (see here), but the third one is rather new. There is an option to hide your home from HomeForHome’s search engine so that other users will not be able to find it and therefore you will not receive unwanted requests.

To hide your home, click on the “Hide” link located in the toolbar below the home title (see image). A message will pop up asking you to accept or cancel the action. This message says: “Are you sure you want to hide your home from the search engine? The home will temporarily cease to appear in the search engine results until you indicate otherwise…”

Now you know. HomeForHome keeps adding new features so you can enjoy house swapping.

Yesterday, after telling you about Laura’s home swap offer we said we had another open topic already picked out to share with you, it is very different from Laura’s and many miles away because it is an offer to visit the United States this Summer. Here are the details:

Come to the American west, summer 2011 - This is the title of the offer posted by Sally and Chris, a couple with 3 sons looking to exchange their home in Laramie, Wyoming. What do they want? They say they are open to all offers and if you check their destination preferences you will find a very long list. Their offer is perfect for outdoor lovers, because their location is excellent for mountain/road cycling, hiking, fishing, & rock climbing and they are willing to share their camping equipment and bicycles, as well as their car and their camping caravan trailer (wow!). We invite you to check the list under “Points of interest” because you will be surprised with everything Laramie has to offer. Their availability calendar says the house is available from May 28th to August 14th so you better contact them soon!

When an opportunity like this one knocks on your door, it is a good idea to give it at least a moment to analyse if it is the right offer for you or not. If it is not the offer you have been waiting for you would have only lost a few minutes but if it meets your expectations you would have gained many minutes of joy in your next home swap.

Image: graur codrin / FreeDigitalPhotos.net.

Hi! It seems many people are looking for house swaps, yes! Our Community Forum is as active as ever, in the past week only we had over 80 active topics in the Exchange Requests section. In there you can find almost any kind of offer from one week stays to two year stays! It is just amazing. We welcome this activity burst and we hope it keeps going for a long time.  It is not time to be shy, it is time to hit those keys and chat with other swappers

Have you been participating too? What are you waiting for? Here is one offer we found that has no reply yet (we can not believe this offer has no replies and it has been in the forum for over a week!) with the links so you can check it really quick and if you are interested (if you are in London, I think you will be interested):

Seaside in Italy for London - If I had a house in London I would definitely be replying to Laura who is offering her seaside flat in Cantabria from June to September in exchange for a one week stay in London between July 12th and August 20th. She also says the home exchange can be simultaneous or non-simultaneous. It seems like a very good offer. Check out her home and profile and contact her before someone else “books” her flat! She needs space for a family of four and will be travelling with two children. Seems like the perfect offer for a Londoner family.

We have another very interesting home exchange proposal in cue for tomorrow, so if you are looking, we are too!

Image: photostock / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

The Summer is near for people in Europe and North America. Only one month separates us from the longed for season. Kids are counting the days left til their vacations (and so are school teachers) and many HomeForHome users have completed their homework. We can easily see this by browsing through the homes listed in HomeForHome. Many house swaps have been arranged for the coming months.

What are you waiting for? If you have not started your “marketing” plan to find a house swap for this Summer, you still have time and if you have not had any luck yet, do not throw the towel! There is probably someone looking for what your house has to offer. Here are some quick tips:

- Login regularly to check for updates. This time of the year can be very busy, depending on where you are and where you want to go, of course, so any new interesting message should be answered as soon as possible to increase the chance you are the first to reply if another house swapper has been sending messages to people in your area.

- Remember the FORUM. It is not there just for fun and to talk about things that interest us, it is an important area to be used as a tool to find and post specific house swap offers.

- Before you send a message or a request, make sure to check the availability calendar or any notes the other user may have added to his/her house description or personal profile to indicate their current interests. This will help you avoid wasting time sending offers to homes that are already taken or users not interested in your area.

We hope these notes help you find a great swap for this Summer.

Image: Taken from Wikimedia Commons on 2011/05/22.

Yesterday we gave you ideas to let others know that you want to do a weekend home swap and today we are going to focus on using HomeForHome to find users that offer weekend home exchanges.

Finding weekend swappers in HomeForHome

These are the ways you can search for this offers:

- Availability: Use the Start/End dates in the Search tab to look for houses that are available in the weekend you want to travel. Combine this with marking the check-box to find swappers that accept non-simultaneous exchanges to increase your chances of contacting someone that may try it because non-simultaneous exchanges not necessarily need to last the same amount of days and are more flexible. For example, you could arrange to spend 3 weekends in nearby beach house while your partner stays an entire week in your rural house at once later.
- Explore the offers in the Community forum. The area for Other exchanges could be the starting point but other sections may have interesting offers, like Exchanges for retired people, Exchanges for family holidays, or Non-simultaneous exchanges.

While navigating in the Community forum, or searching for homes using the Search tab, you may encounter offers from people that did not write the information in English. Don’t let this stop you from contacting them. Many users have not added the descriptions in English but have specified that they do speak English (click on the image for details on where to find this information), and even if they don’t speak English, there is an automatic translation tool that will allow them to see your message in their own language. This tool works best if the original message does not use slang or abbreviations.

Finally, remember that to navigate through home descriptions or user profiles in languages you don’t understand, you can use Google Translate.