Our First Home Exchange
“There are strangers sleeping in my bed.”
The thought wouldn’t leave. Did it make it better (or worse) that we were sleeping in theirs?
Last month, my family and I found ourselves in a new house belonging to a family that we didn’t really know in a place we’d never been before- with the knowledge that the family was experiencing the same thing in our house.
Our first home exchange had begun.
Why We Swapped Houses
Fresh off our trip to Italy last fall, I was feeling pretty good about how far my travel (and booking) skills had come. We’d just landed another trip for a small fraction of the ‘normal’ cost. And yet, a slow, unnerving feeling was creeping in.
While I had seemingly mastered the art of miles, hotel points, and AirBnB haggling, getting a $12,000 trip for $3000 still cost $3000.
With inflation rapidly eating away at our limited discretionary income, I had begun to realize that even with free tickets, we would need to either:
Travel Less OR
Travel Smarter
Before hanging up my neck pillow for good, I decided to take a stab at the latter.
Eureka!
Somewhere in my wanderings around the internet, I stumbled across a site called “Home Exchange”.
The idea is simple: You like to travel. Other people like to travel. Rather than you both blowing all your money on hotels and Airbnb’s, what if you just traded houses for awhile?
What if lodging could be $0… and travel could truly approach “free”?
Typical Trip Expense Breakdown
The Home Exchange platform would charge a small yearly fee to facilitate unlimited exchanges. They would offer peace of mind with a generous insurance policy and rating system. They’d provide a robust infrastructure for helping out with all manner of advanced exchanges like non-reciprocal, asymmetric, or non-overlapping stays, to name a few.
My Inner Debate
After a brief tour of the site, I waffled.
“You never know,” my inner optimist whispered, “this could be a game-changer”. The realist, however, wasn’t convinced: “Who would want to vacation to Minnesota anyways?” and“Think of the risks!”
In the end, it was free to make a home profile, so I did. I took half an hour, filled in our house’s specs and uploaded some basic photos.
Then, I forgot about it. Because again, who would want to stay in our little old house in “flyover” country?
As it turned out, lots of people.
Our First Bites
Within weeks, we were getting a slow trickle of proposed trips from a number of places, many of them coming from our “preferred destinations” we had specified in our profile. The first few invites were intriguing, but less-than-perfect fits. We simply responded with thanks for their interest and told them to keep us in mind for the future.
Then in January, a message arrived.
Suddenly, on the table was a two-week summer trip to a beautiful, family friendly house in the Pacific Northwest. The PNW was a region we’d wanted to explore for years. A quick dust-off of my Delta miles balance told me that if we wanted to, we could take a crack at this crazy experimental step in our quest towards truly free travel.
So we said, “yes to the address”. The countdown had begun for our first home exchange.
Preparing for our First Exchange
Our experienced exchange family graciously guided us through this strange new process. We went back-and-forth, finalizing dates via the app, had a short video chat to get to know their family a little bit, and then… (gulp) we booked our plane tickets. With the ‘leap of faith’ locked down, it was time to prepare our house.
Final Fix-ups (months out)
In the months leading up to the exchange, we finally finished the last 5% of our house fixups (let’s be real- without a home exchange would I ever have finished the basement trim? 🙃). We lined up my rock star sister-in-law for a last-minute clean after we would leave and we wrote up a quick guidebook to the house.
Deep Clean (weeks out)
In the final weeks leading up to the voyage, we came up with our plan for socking away our sensitive documents and items, we grabbed some spare sheets from Target, and we finally got around to the deep-cleaning we’d put off for far too-long.
And then, just like that, the day arrived. We woke up, switched our sheets, put our food in the basement fridge, and left for the airport.
How it Went
In short, it was amazing. We stayed in a stunning house in a small town minutes from the Puget Sound and 20m from downtown Seattle. We explored not just the city, but the western coastal islands along with Mount Rainier National Park. We even tacked a short trip to Portland on the end (that was less smooth, but that was no fault of Portland’s :)).
A brief glance at what a comparable stay would cost (2 weeks in that house in that location in peak season), I’d conservatively put our lodging savings in the $6000-8000 range (did I mention it was a nice house?).
More surprising than us having a great time was the fact that they loved our home too. While their modern mansion was worth multiple times what our house was worth, I was relieved that the Seattle family appreciated the old charm of our still-in-process 1920s craftsman.
Final Thoughts
For us, Home Exchange appears to be nothing short of an absolute game-changer. Its benefits extended beyond our initial hopes and dreams of a free trip.
In addition to a memorable and deeply affordable vacation, our house has never looked better - and our kids are now obsessed with fluffy cats (we volunteered to take care of their kitties during the swap).
The best takeaway by far, though, has to be this new, strange, yet mutually beneficial relationship with another family across the country.
As fun as it was to get a glimpse into their way of life, it was equally enjoyable to hear about the things that they loved about life in our little part of the world. While it still baffles me that someone would want to stay in our humble abode, we’re already discussing our next swap with our new Seattle “house-friends”.
My hope is that this initial exchange is just the beginning. Over the last few weeks, we’ve had proposals come in from some of our favorite spots on planet earth- Germany, Switzerland, and of course, our much-beloved France. Will our next big trip not be just an exchange, but rather a series of exchanges from the Pyrenees to the Alps?
Is Home Exchange for You?
Home Exchange isn’t for everyone. If you’ve got a $10M house filled with fragile art, an anxious demeanor, and/or so much money that you don’t need to save on travel, Home Exchange might not be for you.
But for those adventurous souls looking to see the world on a budget, for those open to new locations - and maybe even new friendships- Home Exchange might just be your big next step in seeing the world.
Here is my sign-up link for HomeExchange. It’s free to create a profile (just to see, right? 🤠). This link will also give us both some “Guest Points” which can come in handy for those more advanced exchanges I mentioned.
Bon Voyage!