One of the brilliant things about Home Exchange at HomeForHome is that you can receive all the benefits of taking very low-cost vacations, and it’s all available to you as part of our free service.

So if you’ve had a good home exchange experience, and if you like the website, then you could let your friends know. That is, if you think that they’d be interested and up for a home exchange! If you or people that you know are finding the economic crisis is really starting to grate and make things difficult, then you could offer a little bit of help or advice by introducing them to the idea of home exchange.

You could easily paste this link into an email and make the suggestion to some of your friends http://en.homeforhome.com.

Considering that membership is completely free, they’ve got nothing to lose. Plus, if they sign up and have some fantastic vacations then they’ll be very grateful! They might even bake you a cake

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.