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 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.

Weekends can be seen as weekly vacations. They are a time to forget about work responsibilities, spend time with the family, go back to your hobbies and relax - at least most weekends. So why shouldn’t you make the most out of this weekly vacation? HomeForHome can help you find other swappers interested in weekend home exchanges, maybe in a nearby city or town (or maybe further away), and once in a while you could experience a weekend getaway without the cost of paying for a place to stay. All you need is a HomeForHome account and transportation - that if you can’t arrange to include a vehicle swap.

A short term home swap is perfect for weekend getaways, and there are many advantages of swapping your house with someone in your same country - check out this previous post from 2009 about Domestic Exchange - and this combination is excellent to arrange a trip to your favourite band’s concert or that music festival you always wanted to go to.

A weekend home swap is perfect for new swappers, because you can test how everything works without leaving your home for more than two days and see if you can handle this way of travelling. They are also a good way to build a reputation, just remember to make the arrangements using our “Request exchange” feature and making sure your counterpart agrees to the exchange using the system, so they can leave feedback once the swap weekend is over.

Be optimistic, your next weekend can be a house swap weekend = a fun vacation weekend
Be ultra-optimistic, your next weekends can be house swap weekends

Image: By OsamaK (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

We will leave Brazil now to travel with our words to another exciting destination. There are certainly so many things to be discovered in Brazil that is unlikely that we would not find a future pretext to suggest a house swap to this marvellous country. We hope to have shared enough so you added it to your list of Destination preferences - If you are unfamiliar with this feature, let’s take a moment to explain how it works and how to use it because it adds valuable information to attract other users interested in your location:

Users may add a list of preferred destinations that will be shown in their personal profile page under Destination preferences. To add a destination you need to login to your account, click on Edit Profile and scroll down until you find the boxes under the title Countries you would like to go to (see image). To mark a country as a destination you would be interested in visiting you need to click on it and then click on the arrow pointing to the right-hand box. All the countries that you leave in this box will be shown in your profile page after you confirm the changes by clicking on the Modify button. To remove a country from the list, just select it on the right-hand box and click on the left-pointing arrow.

Please note that since it is not a mandatory field, there are many users that have not completed this information. However, it is useful data for someone that is looking to swap to your area, because if they see beforehand that you are interested in travelling to their country, the chances they will decide to contact you will increase.

One thing that can help you enjoy your vacation is knowing that you have someone watching your back every step of the way. Wouldn’t that be nice? It would be great to have someone help you with the unforeseen problems that could arise during your trip: You buy your airplane ticketing and something comes up in the last minute but you don’t have to lose your investment. You make a non-refundable deposit to book an attraction or tour and then you have to cancel but you get your money back… It is like making “non-refundable” have a different meaning

Image by renjith krishnan /FreeDigitalPhotos.net

It may be obvious to you that we are talking about insurance. Travel insurance, medical insurance, car insurance, group travel insurance, holiday insurance… There are several options and a wide variety of packages and prices, but if you want to play it safe you may want to look into the different options to have your back covered.

There are two special circumstances that apply to home exchange:

1) If you already have your home covered, you may need to check with your insurance provider for the special case of having someone stay in your house in your absence.

2) As with your home insurance, if you plan to exchange vehicles during your swap it may be better to check with your insurance company to make sure everything is good to go.

There are even some companies that offer special packages for home exchange trips, so you may want to look into that too

An important part of our home exchange system is the feedback provided and the rating obtained. Your rating would be your best presentation to other swappers.

First, you have to agree on the exchange using your HomeForHome account. The offer has to be accepted by both parts (the offer sender and the offer receiver). This will change the status of the exchange request to Accepted and it will be marked with a green flag. Only then, the fields to leave your opinion will become visible below the exchange request details.

Once you return from your home exchange and get settled in (no rush), please return to HomeForHome to leave your opinion about your partner’s house. Login to your account, go to the “Requests” area and find the exchange offer under “Received” or “Sent“, then click into the offer and you will find the fields to write your comments and rate the exchange under the title “Opinion of the exchange” (remember to click the “Send” button when you are finished or the changes will not be saved)

If you make a mistake when you write your opinion, you will be able to review it and change it. Simply find the exchange offer again and click into it, scroll down and you will find the comments provided. Amend them and click “Send” one more time. If you need help, contact our Support Team.

HomeForHome continues to grow. We have over 18,000 international users, several houses have received their first swappers and a smaller group has received more than one exchanger.

Image by Matt Banks /FreeDigitalPhotos.net

To encourage you to register, swap and leave feedback, we will now and then feature some houses that have received positive feedback on their first exchanges:

Spacious 4 Bedroomed House In Market Town: “Our comfortable home has four bedrooms, dining room and sitting room, a well equipped kitchen, laundry room and a large garden. “

Dulwich 5 Bed Townhouse In London: “Our house is in a lovely leafy area of London called West Dulwich which is just a twelve minute train journey from Victoria Station in Central London. The house is 110 years old and has lots of character but all modern conveniences. It has two large reception rooms and a big kitchen/diner. The main bedroom has an en suite bathroom and there are two further bathrooms and a downstairs toilet. It may not be suitable for small children as there is a pond in the garden. There is a small supermarket just two minutes walk from the house and some excellent pubs and restaurants in the area.“

Riverside Apartment 15 Minutes From Central London: “Spacious and bright apartment on the third floor (no lift) of this quiet yet convenient and elegant Edwardian block on the Thames… Large communal gardens, direct access to the towpath for walking or cycling along the river to Putney, Kew, Richmond, and just across the river from the bustling shopping centre and transport hub of Hammersmith. Easy access by bus or tube (4 lines) to central London (15 minutes) and buses to Kensington (10 minutes) and Richmond, Kew, Chiswick and central London if preferred.“

Now you know: register, do your part, swap and speak up. Your house could be featured next month!

Home exchange will lower the your travel expenses, so why shouldn’t you plan the vacations you have always dreamed of? Why shouldn’t you go after your perfect trip?

Like your perfect:

… Paris - not only for romantic couples or people interested in art and the museums, Paris can be attractive to anyone. And why wouldn’t it be? We’ve mentioned before: Paris does have everything! But at the same time, Parisians are trying to get away from their city and if your hometown is the city that has everything, where would you be interested in travelling to? Seems like anywhere! Paris is the city with the most houses registered for home exchange in HomeForHome. Paris alone has more registered swappers than the UK!

… beach paradise - It can be a vibrant Mediterranean beach, an exotic sparsely populated Caribbean sandy heaven, a hot spot for water-sports and adventure.

… relaxation in the mountains - Clean air, the clear blue sky, the sounds of nature and your nervous system will reset itself.

Image by Evgeni Dinev /FreeDigitalPhotos.net

… exotic trip to a distant destination - Go crazy! You can almost close your eyes, roll a globe, use your finger to pinpoint where your next adventure will take place and you’ll find a swapper there! That’s if you don’t hit water, of course

… Christmas trip - we insist, if you want to swap this Christmas you need to get started…

What is it going to be then?