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.

If you’re thinking of doing a long home exchange, we recommend that you try to plan ahead as far as possible.

As bonny are the days of cheap-travel-when-you-book-early, this kind of advice is probably taken for read. But with home exchange there are other factors to consider besides the advantages of cheaper travel deals.

1) You widen your options. The longer you leave arranging your holiday, the smaller the group of available people there will be. If you get in there first, you’ll have more options.

2) If for any reason, the home exchange falls through, you’ll still have time to organize another one.

3) Organizing in advance gives you the opportunity to develop more of a relationship with your fellow exchange partners. You can get chatting on MSN or Googletalk and start to not only swap advice and recommendations of your respective local areas, but also to build up a rapport before you make the trip.

4) You can use the extra time to post a comment on the website and see what other users have to recommend about your chosen area. So you can even aument your own travel guide research with the real opinions and experiences of other users just like you! Just got to http://en.homeforhome.com and whack your idea out there!

5) You’ve got time to clean through the house bit by bit, so you don’t have to do a ginormous turn over of the entire property on the brink of doing all your packing.