An important part of building your presence in HomeForHome is how you present the attractive things going on near your location. Some lucky people are located in touristic “hot-spots” like downtown London, romantic Paris, the timeless channels of Venice, the Mediterranean coast… But those who need to make their location more appealing must add extra information to catch more people’s attention and receive more home exchange requests.

In view of helping these last people find attractive things to add to their home descriptions, and focusing on the “Points of interest near your home” field, we have the following websites:

BritEvents.com - hosts a calendar of events taking place in Britain. There’s a chance an event taking place in your area is listed here because they seem to have just about everything: sports events, shows, plays, exhibitions, conferences, concerts, gigs, art & craft, and even a section of bizarre events which is presented “From World Gurning Championships to The Biggest Liar Competition, and The Coopers Hill Cheese Rolling Championship to the Bog Snorkelling Championship, we Brits are renowned for devising some of the oddest, most bizarre events imaginable to keep us entertained”. So, give it a chance and you may find an event that “spices up” your location.

enjoyEngland - in their own words “you’ll find everything you need to plan a day out or short break in England. Explore the map for top locations around the country, find inspiring ideas on where to go and what to do or use our day trip planner to find great events happening near you.”

These websites will also be appealing to those looking for a particular event or activity, or those who are not sure what would their next adventure be. Whichever your situation may be, you’ll stay there the cheapest way using HomeForHome.

HomeForHome is the right place to find the perfect way to start the New Year. We have home exchange offers from all around the world waiting for you, get on board!

Registration is free and involves two steps:

1. Sign up.

2. Add your home.

To sign up you’ll need an e-mail account, and after selecting your location, your screen name and password you’ll be ready to move to step 2. During registration, we offer you a quick home adding procedure to get you through the basics, but after you complete your registration you’ll be able to expand the information provided. To do this, login to your account using your e-mail and the password you selected and you’ll be presented with your “My account” page.

Once logged in, you can select “Edit profile” to add your photo, select your exchange preferences, the languages you speak, the countries you would like to go to, or write a short presentation. You can also add a new home (you may add as many homes as you want using the “Insert new home” link) or expand the information provided about your home during registration. To do this, select the “Edit” option under “My homes” for the property you want to modify and proceed to mark the appropriate checkboxes and fill the appropriate fields to specify facilities, services, activities and points of interest near your home. You may also add photos, videos, or change your home’s availability.

After you add the finishing touches to your account, start searching for exchange opportunities, explore, and contact users directly using the “Request exchange” or “Contact” buttons.

HomeForHome wishes you a very happy 2010! May all your wishes come true and may your perfect vacation be only a few clicks away!

HomeForHome has over 8000 listings worldwide (and rising!). With so many offers, we are certain your perfect home exchange is just a search away. However, how should you get started? Obviously, you shouldn’t have to look through 8000 offers (or even half so many!) to find a good prospect. To make the most of your searching time, it is better for you to decide about a few details before you get started: Have you decided to visit a particular country/area? Remember that the wider the area, there are more chances to find a good match. Are you interested in a particular date? For example, if you are attending an event, you may check the date and use it to perform your search, so you don’t have to look through offers that strictly excluded that date already. Do you have a preference about staying in a house or flat? Answers to these questions may be useful when you use our “Search” features. If you take a look at our search options, you will find several things you can specify to make the most of your search. Of course there’s no need to specify all the search options, but you may want to include all your “musts”, like Internet access or a washing machine.

There are circumstances when performing a detailed search may not be the best way to get started. For example, if you are looking for a long term exchange, there’s another option that could make it easier: search the “Community“. There you’ll find a forum for people looking for long term exchanges, were you can discuss issues about this kind of swap. You are welcome to start a discussion of your own, so other interested users can contact you. The forum is also a good choice for those who do not have a preferred destination and are really looking for interesting opportunities around the globe.

If you need to learn more about how to use any of these features, then just send your questions to help@homeforhome.com and our Support team will be glad to assist you.

It’s now easier than ever to rate your home exchange experience. Before, you were able to evaluate your exchange via a ratings form that would be sent to you one week after you’d come back from your home exchange vacation. However, as many people were organizing home exchange requests without actually accepting the request form that was sent through the website, they were not receiving the ratings form in their email.

So we decided to improve our system so that as a user, you can give your opinion on a home exchange as soon as you’ve done it. Now, if you send a home exchange request and the other user accepts it, then the “ratings form” will automatically appear on the screen if you click on “Requests received” or “Requests sent”.  Be careful though: firstly, both parties need to have agreed that they’re ready to rate their experiences of the exchange.

In addition to this form, you will still receive the email that lets you share you opinion one week after you’ve come back from the holiday. But it’s a good idea to have a look at the requests page so that you know which exchange it is exactly. Then you will be ready to make comments about your exchange, for example: what you liked, what you didn’t like, how you got on with your exchange partners, etc…

We hope this system will make your use of our website just that little bit easier. If you have any questions or queries, then just send an email our way.

Just a little note to refresh in everyone’s mind the HomeForHome ethos.

We’re a free online service that enables our users to do free holiday home exchanges across the world. We offer the facilities on our website to people seeking holidays in which they go and stay in the home of another user. In exchange they allow their exchange partner the use of their house for an agreed period.

Exchanges can be non-simultaneous, and can last for however long the users want and agree to.

HomeForHome is very much a community-based website. As such, we strive to maintain the spirit of cameraderie, and the integrity of the homes available.

Homeforhome is not a host site for being wishing to rent or sell properties. Whilst we vigilate the homes that are uploaded on to the site, we ask that if you come across a home that is seeking sale or renting, or any other transaction involving the exchange of funds, that you notify us immediately and we will instantly delete the profile.

We seek to preserve the integrity and quality of the HomeForHome community so that you have the best possible experience of home exchange. Please help us to maintain the dependability of HomeForHome.

It is undoubtedly a good idea to get to know your prospective home exchange partners before doing an exchange. In any well prepared,  decently planned home exchange, conversation prior to the vacation is a must.

Not only does it provide you with a great assistance in finding your way through a) the house, b) the district, and c) the city, but it can also arm you with a wealth of information about top tourist attractions, restaurant recommendations, upcoming concerts and shows etc. The most experienced, expert guide you could have for your vacation is sat there at the other end of the internet, just waiting for your message. So it makes a lot of sense on a practical level to have a fair amount of contact before you set off for your vacation.

On a personal level too, it makes an awful lot of sense to build up a rapport with your home exchangers. If there are things about your home that you are worried about, or that require special care, then establishing a sense of trust between the exchangers is the ideal way of approaching this. It’s good for everyone’s peace of mind to talk through the plans and get to know fellow exchangers so that you feel comfortable and relaxed by the time that your vacations come along.

So, how to set about doing this? Our website provides you with an internal messaging system which is easy to use, and which sends you notifications to your email inbox when you receive a new message. Alternatively you can swap email address, or telephone numbers. An excellent way of building up a solid, personal relationship with your exchange partners is to use Skype. International calls via phone lines can be costly. However, if you download Skype, all you need is a microphone, and you can make either free international calls, or international calls at a very cheap rate (depending on the area).

By all accounts, it’s worthwhile making the effort, and with email and Skype, the only cost is the time you spend.

One particular type of home exchange is a study exchange. Whether you’re taking time out from work to study, or you’re a full time student who’s looking to do a study abroad program, home exchange can definitely help you out!

All that you need is to have a residence where people can come and stay in. You don’t have to be a home or a mortgage owner - if you are renting you are eligible to do home exchanges.

To help find like minded people, you can post a message in our forum entitled; “Study exchanges.” Equally, if this is something that interests you, you may want to consider doing a non-simultaneous exchange. This is where you vacate your home whilst the other family comes to stay, and they do the same for you, so that you are able to accommodate your own study and course time tables.

Alternatively, you could do a “hosting” exchange. This is when you have the family or people (or person!) come to stay whilst you are still in your home, and in return they put you up when you go over to do your study.

Home exchange is flexible, and there are a variety of ways of managing timing for study programmes and learning abroad.

If you’re wondering how best to describe your house in order to appeal to other users, here are a few handy tips.

1) Form.

When people look through the profile of your home, whether they realize it or not, they are not just looking for information about your home. They’re also looking for information about you as a person. So if you write everything in CAPSLOCK it might make it a little difficult to read. If the text is not punctuated very well (for example, with double commas, careless spelling, or incomplete sentences) might give the impression of carelessness or untidiness.

2) Style

The words you use can be very important.

Take these three examples:

Brick house located near cost, good view, short walk to sea, easy footpaths, kitchen has lino floor, green bedroom carpets, patio outside.

A beautiful brick house that you’ll absolutely fall in love with, with the sea on the doorstep. Huge space, and it has a mesmerizing kitchen lino, and emerald green curtains to die for. You’ll have the most amazing time of your life here.

An attractive brick house that has the beach within a comfortable walking distance. Inside the house is beautifully furnished and cosy, with plenty of space. There is a patio garden ideal for having breakfast, and a very calming ambience. We are very happy living here.

Of course, some of what you write depends on your personality. However, it is important to bear in mind that if you write using a monotonous tone, focusing on irrelevant details, then you will not be doing your home justice. On the other hand, beware of the “over-sell”. If you make the description too enthusiastic, people might feel less willing to trust it.

So it’s important to keep these two points in mind. Make your descriptions neat, tidy, with good spelling and grammar. Also, strike the right tone describing simply the benefits of your home, without doing a “hard-sale”.

Just a quick reminder to everyone about an important tool that you have on the website.

You don’t have to trawl through every person in the area where you want to go, sending out exchange proposals left, right and centre.  We have a special function on the search section which means that you can search for people in a specific area, who are also visited in visiting YOUR area.

In order to access this tool, what you need to do is click on the “Search” tab at the top of the page. Then, as you fill in the details of where you would like to visit on the left hand side of the page, you will find a tick-box. This says “that are interested in my area”. If you click on this box, then all the search results will be of people who both a) have a home in the area in which you would like to visit, and b) are interested in coming to your area.

It makes home exchange a great deal easier this way! Just a quick reminder to all of you in case you had forgotten, and to alert new users of this important website tool!

We’ve received a few emails from people who are finding difficulty in changing the details of their homes on the website.

It’s an easy process, but you have to bear in mind that you have a profile as a USER and then you have the profiles of your HOMES. So, if you want to change the photos of your home, the videos, the dates of availability, or any of the details about your home (e.g.:  facilities, activities, exchange preferences…) then you need to do the following:

Firstly, you need to click on “My account” in the top right hand corner of the page.

Once you have done that, you will be taken to the My Account page, which is divided into two sections. “My account” at the top, then underneath that the “My homes” section. In the “My homes” section you have a selection of tabs such as “Edit, availability, photos” etc, and it is from here that you can upload more photos, change the availability on the calendar, change the details on “How do you get to your house” etc.

To change your user photo, your screen name, the languages you speak and your countries of preference, you need to click on “My Account”, and then on “Edit profile.”