People are swapping almost anything that is not perishable: clothes, books, appliances, and probably anything you can imagine. So why not swap houses too? The advantage over swapping items is that it doesn’t need to be permanent, a house swap can last from a weekend (or even less!) to several months at a time but you will return to your home sweet home.

Swapping is cheaper than buying and that is why it has become so popular these days, besides, it is said to be a green practice because things get used and reused until they become obsolete or broken, instead of just sitting hidden in a shelf or closet somewhere around the house because you don’t use it any more. The deal with house swapping is similar: it is cheaper than paying for other types of accommodation and it helps travellers reduce how their trips impact on the environment.

Seems like a good combination for a deal: cheap and green. How better can it get? We invite you to join today and start enjoying the benefits of being part of our community of house swappers.

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

What’s a getaway anyway? Well, a getaway can be any thing you want it to be and the flexibility of house swapping can take you away for almost any reason, anytime and without having to spend a fortune. Just pick a reason and exchange your home to:

• Get away from the noise
• Get away to a place nobody knows who you are
• Get away to visit the cousins
• Get away from to somewhere breezy
• Get away from tourists
• Get away to the countryside
• Get away to visit the cousins
• Get away to the beach
• Get away to visit a friend
• Get away to show your children something new
• Get away to enjoy a music festival, and art exhibit, a play ( )
• Get away from stress
• Get away from the routine

I could really use a swap away from/to _____ . Fill in the blank, swap away and remember that some HomeForHome users will allow you to take your pet away with you. Let them get away too!

Image: Public domain image taken from Wikimedia Commons.

Why should you travel to Paris? Depending on who is asked, this question could have several different answers, but which are our top three reasons? We are just about to let you know why HomeForHome is the best place to search for a good house swap opportunity to visit Paris:

1) Paris is the single city with most registered houses waiting for a house swap proposal. Paris alone has more homes registered than most countries!

2) Someone willing to swap their home in Paris could be looking for a different type of vacation, away from a tourist hot-spot or in a different type of hot-spot (for example, Rio de Janeiro is completely different but still a hot-spot). This, combined with the fact that there are over 1600 Parisian homes in HomeForHome, makes it quite likely that you’ll find someone that wants to travel to your area or open to travel to somewhere different.

3) Paris is a year-round destination. No matter when you can travel, you’ll always find magic. Of couse, keep in mind that some attractive areas might not be open to the public during certain times of the year, always check before you make plans. The Internet has become an excellent tool to do so, as many sites have their own websites or you can check websites that offer information for travellers.

Now you know our gold, silver and bronze for Paris.

Image: digitalart / FreeDigitalPhotos.net.

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.

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.

The word “crisis” is still in the front page, stronger than ever and with all the negativity it implies. Risk, debt, budget and debacle are words nobody wants to hear and fear, but it seems they will linger for a while. Something one should not forget is that in times like this, people save money by making cuts in expenses they believe are less important, which is great, but they sometimes include something really important which is resting, taking time to relax and do special things to remain fresh and strong.

HomeForHome can help save money while still enjoying one of life’s pleasures: travelling. Home exchange allows users to save up to 50-70% in travel expenses compared with other options, specially for families. The cost of accommodation is the where the major cut is, but there are also other savings like those related to food because when you swap you can buy the ingredients and prepare your own meals. Another large cut could come from transportation because you have the chance to arrange a car swap as well.

Count on HomeForHome to travel in times of crisis.

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.

In yesterday’s post we suggested a very short house swap, lasting only a weekend, and you may be wondering how you can find other users interested in this type of home swap. We have some suggestions:

Let others know about your intentions

The easiest way to find any swap is to be found by someone that is interested in your offer. To make this happen you need to share your interests. There are some features you can use to do this: the availability calendar, your home’s description, and HomeForHome’s Community forum.

The first two, can be edited once logged in to your account, using the tools provided there. See the next image for details about how to access the availability calendar and the home description:

The Community forum is very easy to use and we have written articles about how to use the forum. There are users already posting their offers in the “Other exchanges” forum to find weekend exchanges. For example, look at this home swap offer from Donatella, who is willing to exchange houses with someone interested in a weekend in touch with nature staying near Abruzzo’s National Park (Parco Nazionale d’Abruzzo Lazio e Molise). Something we would like to highlight about Donatella’s offer is that the offer was re-posted, which is a great way to keep the topic visible because posts that have been recently active appear first in the list of topics.

We have many other suggestions to share with you, so we will continue tomorrow. In the meantime you have homework to implement some of the suggestions above.