An Old Fool’s Guide to FREE Holidays – Home Exchange

This is our first guest blogger week! Out first guest is Victoria Twead, who will be posting a article each day for the next five days. Our thanks to Victoria! Enjoy her writing, she is very good!!!

You can travel to any part of the world and NOT PAY ONE PENNY to stay in the most luxurious of accommodations.

A beach location in the Bahamas? A penthouse in New York? A visit back to the UK? The world is your oyster – and all for free! A long weekend, one week, one month, one year; you decide…

And that’s not all! Not only is your accommodation free, but your use of a car, boat, computer, children’s toys and much more will cost you nothing, either.

How? It’s easy! We’ve done it twice and plan to do it again many more times.

It’s simple, all you do is swap a home with somebody else. Join a respected site like Homeexchange.com and enjoy yourself browsing through the wonderful homes and locations on offer.

The site is extremely user-friendly and the locations and homes will make your mouth water! Choose whether to search by geographical location, dates or look for people who would like to stay in your part of the world.

You’ll need to pay a small amount to become a member, but that’s a tiny fraction of the money you’ll save on your holiday.

Once you’re a member, you are free to contact any other member with a view to exchanging. Or, add your own details, photographs and available dates, sit back and wait to see who’ll contact you. You’ll be surprised!

Getting started

When we lived in England, we discovered Home Exchange. A bit nervous at first, we put up our details, stated we’d like to visit the USA in the summer, and waited to see who might like to exchange houses with us. We weren’t hopeful. But nearly every day someone contacted us from all corners of America, wanting to exchange homes.

We considered our little house comfortable but not particularly attractive. It didn’t matter one bit. Because we lived in West Sussex, we were a ferry trip away from France, near London, surrounded by ancient castles and beautiful countryside.

Plenty of people wanted to exchange with us!

It was difficult, but we finally chose to swap with a retired couple from South Carolina. They were excited about exploring England, and we couldn’t wait to stay in their beautiful home on a private island.

It had to be too good to be true, hadn’t it? No, it wasn’t. We had an amazing holiday! The South Carolina home was beautiful; their walk-in closets were bigger than our kitchen, there was a pool-room and lovely verandah.

Soon after that holiday, Joe and I left England, and relocated to Spain.

Again, we decided to exchange homes, if we could. This time we had a quirky house in a tiny, remote mountain village to offer. Would anyone want to sample Spanish village life? We needn’t have worried. As before, plenty of people contacted us.

Ken and Glennys had a wonderful, large airy house on the Gold Coast, Australia and we had an amazing holiday. Ken and Glennys loved our Spanish village, although poor Glennys suffered a very unfortunate mishap. (No space to tell you about here, you’ll have to read my book!)

FAQ

These are some of the questions Joe and I always get asked.

Q. How do you know the people who contact you are genuine?
A. It often takes months to arrange a home exchange. During that time, you’ll be emailing, writing and telephoning each other. You’ll get to know each other really well, even before you physically meet.

Q. What if they wreck your house, or steal all your valuables?
A. I’ve never heard of that happening. You are staying and caring for their home, and they are doing the same for you.

Q. What about pets?
A. Many home-exchangers swap their pets, too. Ken and Glennys kindly looked after our chickens. Some people look after each others horses, dogs, cats, whatever. You just arrange all that sort of thing before the holiday.

Q. How do you know how everything works?
A. Experienced home-exchangers often leave a pack with instructions for the household goods, days when the trash is taken away, emergency phone numbers, recommended restaurants, maps and all kinds of useful information.

Q. What about children? Do families home-exchange?
A. Of course! And the children have the added benefit of playing with each others toys.

Perhaps you just want to visit family in the UK? Rest assured, there’ll be plenty of people who will happily swap their British home for your house or apartment in Spain.

Thanks to Victoria for this article. If you would like to contribute as a guest blogger in the future please leave a comment or email us

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