ExchangeHomesBlog.com

A great many home exchanges include exchange of the family car. It’s an ideal arrangement that will usually save the exchange partners a substantial amount of money in car rental fees.

A member from the UK has contacted me with this question:

We’re in the middle of arranging an exchange with a family from Los Angeles. We’ve indicated in our home exchange offer that we would also like to exchange cars, but this family has a two teenagers who drive and I’m very uncomfortable with the prospect of them let loose on the streets in our car. Can I stipulate that only their parents drive?

Absolutely. Never be afraid to make any stipulations, be they about cars or anything involved in the exchange. Make your requirements absolutely clear during the discussion stages of setting up a home swap, then document them as part of your written Home Exchange Agreement. Make sure the agreement is signed by both parties and that both retain a signed copy.

Actually, it’s likely that your auto insurance company would decline to cover any driver from the USA under the age of 25 anyway, and teenagers almost certainly. Irrespective of an issue with teenagers, make sure you inform your insurance agent of your exchange. Make it absolutely clear that home exchangers count as “guests” in your home, not tenants or renters. In fact, it’s always a good idea to discuss your intention to participate in home exchanges well in advance with your agent. You will then have plenty of time to iron out any issues and enlighten him if he’s never heard of the home exchange concept.

We’ve recently been contacted by a tv production company (the first this “season”), asking if we could put them in touch with two sets of members about to embark on a home exchange, between either the USA and London, or USA and Paris. The tv company is based in New York so they would definitely prefer it if the US home could be located within their reach.

Immediately I received the request, I emailed as many likely exchangers as I could find on the ExchangeHomes.com database, but so far I haven’t had a positive response. A couple of members replied, volunteering to participate, but their home swaps are not until August and September and this tv company’s deadline is May 12th—just a week from today.

It’s unfortunate that the media’s schedules don’t allow us more time. Each year we receive requests similar to this one, and if only they would give us a month’s notice as opposed to a week or less (one newspaper last year phoned on a Friday and wanted a story for Sunday’s edition!), we might stand a better chance of accommodating them.

Anyway, I know this blog has a readership way beyond our ExchangeHomes.com members, so if anyone reading is already on, or about to leave on a home swap as I’ve indicated, please call me toll free at 877-256-3323 and I’ll put you in touch with the tv company.

A Major Step Forward to Certify Home Exchange Clubs

Copied directly from the CHECtravel website:

CHEC is a response to the demands of home exchangers and exchange club owners themselves. Together a need was recognized for an organization that could create and maintain professional standards for exchange agencies, as well as a code of conduct for individual exchangers.

End of quotation.

At the moment just ten home exchange clubs are certified by CHECtravel and we encourage all potential home exchangers to join a club displaying the certification you see displayed to the left. The logo indicates that the the club has been assessed and approved by an independent committee consisting of club owners, industry professionals and experienced home exchangers. All CHEC-certified agencies have agreed to uphold CHEC’s high ethical standards of behavior for themselves and their members.

We also urge all our members, whether they be new or experienced, to join CHEC as a home exchanger. >> Click Here for more information.

Also, as an initial promotion, CHEC has told us that they are offering five of our Full (advertising) Members a free, one year membership. These will be awarded on a strictly first come, first served basis. To qualify you as a Full Member, you must enter the I.D. Number of the property you have listed with us when you sign up, plus, you must indicate that you are a member of ExchangeHomes.com .

Just as on our website, your privacy is paramount to CHEC. They never display any names or contact information in their member area database. All they list are city, country, exchange agency and exchange club number, with a direct link to the listing on our site. That way CHEC members can find fellow CHEC members in preferred destinations and home exchange agencies.

Even if you miss out on a free membership you should consider joining. Again, quoting from the CHEC website:

Individual CHEC exchangers benefit from the safety and security provided by CHEC member clubs. CHEC members enjoy peace of mind when exchanging with a fellow CHEC member who adheres to the same ethical standards.

I was somewhat disappointed to read a post this morning on another home exchange blog referencing an email the author had received from a New York home exchanger requesting information about putting together a ‘Home Exchange Contract’— or as we call it—’Agreement’.

ExchangeHomes.com offers templates for Home Exchange Agreements, Car Exchange Agreements and a Home Exchange ‘Book’ in both PDF and MS Word formats, as, I’m sure do most of the major home exchange organizations. What’s so disappointing is that most of our members never explore the goodies that are available for them to utilize, and I guess it’s the same for members of other clubs as well.

Agreements / Contracts seem to be a hot issue at the moment because recently I’ve repeatedly been discussing their importance with members. Just last weekend a lady who has been an ExchangeHomes.com for twenty years admitted to me that she has never utilized an Agreement and also that she had no idea she could download a template from the website.

The ExchangeHomes.com templates can be reached by clicking >> Here or, anyone on the website can click the Help Center link, then Sample Forms and Agreements under the Miscellaneous sub-heading.

The importance of using a Home Exchange Agreement was also the subject of a recent post— Finalizing Your Exchange.

I hear from a lot of members who steadfastly believe them to be unnecessary, but as I’ve been explaining to those I’ve had conversations with recently, I’ve yet to hear of an exchange that encountered problems following the completion and signing of an Agreement. Okay— it’s probably not a legal document, but it serves to gather together every important point and issue that arose during the process of arranging the exchange; all those little details that spanned numerous emails, and several phone conversations. Everything is laid out in one document. It also acts as a final buffer against anyone who may possibly renege at the last moment.

As I point out to our members, if the person they are negotiating with is opposed to signing an Agreement, ask them why, and if they persist in not signing they should contact us immediately.

Last week we heard of an unfortunate incident whereby an ExchangeHomes.com member is urgently seeking a replacement home exchange to England, preferably the west country.

They need an exchange between Saturday September 6th, 2008 and Saturday 20th September. To see their listing, click >> Here Any arrangements don’t have to be simultaneous because their exchange property—located in Dunsborough, Western Australia is a rental property.

The couple looking for your help are new participants in home exchange. They were in negotiations with another couple in the west country, but these arrangements fell through suddenly and unexpectedly when a family situation made exchanging during these dates impossible.

If a trip to Western Australia appeals to you, please contact these members.

After a recent mailing to our list of expiring home exchange members, I (as usual) checked our email client for the inevitable list of undeliverable mail. I was suddenly struck by five emails unable to be delivered because the owner’s mail boxes were full. I looked a little bit closer: 2 were Yahoo addresses, 1 was Gmail, 1 was freeserve and one was Inbox.com. Yes—all were FREE email services.

For a long time it’s been a common practice for a lot of home exchangers to utilize free email addresses so that they don’t reveal their main email address, but apparently these people had joined our service and entered their “free” email address, then over the course of time, ceased to check it for contact emails.

Clearly this is yet another reason why we get complaints from a few members, very frustrated because they receive no replies to their contact emails. Until this discovery I’d always attributed this to mails being routed directly into its intended recipient’s spam folder, and plain old lack of courtesy. This now offers yet another cause.

I’ve also taken a look at a couple of these web mail companies—they both appear offer huge amounts of storage space. It’s extremely disheartening to wonder just how many contact emails are sitting there unopened and unresponded to. If you do use a free email address for your home exchange correspondence, please remember to check it daily, otherwise your membership is totally wasted.

When, early in February, we went on-line with the major overhaul to our web site, we bowed to pressure from many members and visitors and introduced a two-tier membership system, effectively allowing non-publishing—or “Associate”—members to initiate contacts with members who paid to list their homes for exchange. We did however exercise an important constraint that limited Associate Members to a maximum of five email contacts during a twenty four hour period.

Once the upgrade got into full swing, we began receiving feedback split just about fifty fifty. Half of those contacting us congratulated us on the move, but the other half were suddenly very vocal in protesting the contacts they were receiving from non-listing members. Just as a side note, before finally deciding upon this two-tier level of memberships we had polled all current members requesting their opinions on the proposed change. Not one had responded with an objection!

Anyway, it was clear that we needed to appease the members suddenly unhappy with the two levels of memberships. Our programmers added a field to the page used to list a home exchange, specifically asking the Full (listing) member whether they wished to be contacted by: a) Full (listing) Members only, or b) Both Full and Associate Members, with the default being (a). In other words, if any Full Member was happy to receive contacts from Associate Members, he or she had to edit their listing(s) to indicate this.

Another change we’ve implemented is with the number of emails allowed to an Associate Member. When we initially allowed just five per day we thought that was sufficient to discourage abuse in the form of email spamming, but we were wrong. During February one person joined with four different memberships (identical IP addresses), so that he could send out sometimes 20+ spam emails per day. Thirty days later he had sent out more than five hundred emails.

He and a handful like him have forced us to limit the number of emails allowed for an Associate Member to be five total, as opposed to five per day.

Personally I’m extremely happy with these amendments. I’ve always firmly believed that a genuine, committed home exchange participant will always be happy to pay a small fee and join a club as a listing member, and many of my earlier posts have reflected as much. But, as the owner of a long-standing home exchange club, I also had to listen to, and act upon a continually voiced request from members and visitors alike. I think we’ve now resolved the issue to everyone’s satisfaction: those members who have no objection to being contacted by non-listing members can allow this to happen with a click of their mouse, and similarly, all members who are only comfortable being contacted by fellow “Full” members can implement this restriction, also with the click of their mouse.

It’s not my intention to turn this into a commercial blog, but when I see an item I believe may be of benefit to both home exchangers and travelers in general, it has to be worth a few minutes of my time to bring it to everyone’s attention.

A number of years ago, I came across a stroller that was a godsend to families traveling with babies and toddlers because it was narrow enough to wheel up the aisle of an aircraft. I recommended this stroller in an issue of our home exchange newsletter and subsequently heard from a large number of parents who either bought one immediately, or subsequently read about it in the newsletter archives. Then I heard that the company manufacturing it had ceased production. I continued to receive inquiries about the stroller, but unfortunately all I was able to do was pass on the bad news.

Then last weekend while in DFW airport on a trip from Dallas to Southern California, a young mother went cruising by with her toddler riding in a car seat on what looked like luggage wheels. I was quick to catch up to her. What is that? and where did you find it?

Go Go Kidz car seat wheels she explained.

Go-Go Babyz Infant Cruizer
with Graco Adaptor Car Seat
Accessories -$ 189.95
Retail Price: 229.95
You Save: $40.00

Needless to say, when I got home I was straight on the Internet searching for more information! The cost seems a little expensive at around. $189, but well worth it! Mom (or Dad) and baby get to cruise through the airport in a regular car seat—down the jet bridge—and down the aisle of regular narrow body aircraft, and better yet the parent only has to install the car seat one time when they reach their destination.

Again, it’s called Go Go Kidz Car Seat Wheels. The link to above will take you directly to Happy Mothers, a reputable (I’ve checked them out) online store. Currently they are offering a saving of $40, Free Shipping and no Sales Tax.

Part Seven of the Series
This post will conclude my series of posts walking you through the entire process of selecting your home exchange club, setting up your listing, making contacts and, most important, finalizing the home exchange arrangements.

Finalizing your arrangements can be critically important and unfortunately it’s one aspect of home swapping that some members often pay the least attention to. In short - discuss everything that you feel is significant. Don’t ever be reluctant to raise a point you believe to be important, and once you’ve done so, make sure you follow it through to a satisfactory conclusion.

If any information your exchange partner provides is unclear, ALWAYS ask for an explanation. Sometimes there can be misunderstandings over terminology, even between people speaking and writing the same language.

Over the years, whenever members have contacted us to complain about some aspect of their home exchange, without fail we’ve always discovered one of two things:

1. The matter they’re dissatisfied with was never discussed and resolved during the process of finalizing the arrangements.
2. They didn’t bother with drawing up and having both parties sign a formal Home Exchange Agreement. An agreement is very important in avoiding any misunderstandings.

One experienced member with multiple swaps under her belt admitted to me the other day that she and her husband hadn’t bothered with a formal agreement BECAUSE they considered themselves experienced and therefore didn’t deem it to be necessary. They had just completed an exchange with a family who were completely new to the concept and from what I was able to gather, discussions had been minimal and the necessity of an agreement was never once addressed. Nothing major had gone wrong with the exchange, but there were several aspects where the other party had used the home and car somewhat liberally.

ExchangeHomes.com provides free access to a whole variety of Home Exchange Forms and documents, including an excellent Agreement. All of these can be downloaded Here. Scroll down the page to view the list.

We also recommend that once your Home Exchange Agreement is worded to the complete satisfaction of both parties, you use a web site such as EchSign.com to digitally sign it. All you have to do is upload or fax in an agreement that needs to be signed, and EchoSign e-mails it to the other party. This service is completely free.

About Your Listing

• Successful Home Exchanging - Finalizing Your Exchange
• Successful Home Exchanging - Contacting Fellow Home Exchangers
• Successful Home Exchanging - Good Photographs Are Important
• Successful Home Exchanging - Additional Listing Tactics
• Successful Home Exchanging - Setting Up Your Listing
• Successful Home Exchanging - More About Selecting A Club
• Successful Home Exchanging - Selecting a Club
• A Guide to Setting Up Your Home Exchange

Okay, so you’ve joined the home exchange club of your choice—hopefully ExchangeHomes.com—and set up your listing, including adding some illustrative photographs. Now it’s time to begin contacting fellow members. Don’t make the serious mistake of adding a listing (no matter how great you think it may be), and then sit back and assume that your work’s over. No way— now the work of sorting through the listings for likely exchange partners and initiating contact begins.

Don’t restrict your contacts to those that specifically list an interest in the area where you live. Approach the job from the opposite direction, by first isolating all the listings in the area you hope to exchange to. Eliminate any that would be poor matches due to the size of the home or composition of the family, then send a contact email to the remainder. All it costs you is a little time and you never know whose interest you may pique.

Having said that, don’t become one of the new brand of “home exchange spammers” who fire off hundreds of contact emails, then only communicate further with those replies that they perceive as the cream, leaving the remainder wondering what is going on. That’s just plain bad manners.

Always respond to every contact email your receive, whether it’s a cold contact or a reply to your own mailing. This is one overriding issue we constantly have to deal with, members contact us unable to understand why their emails are receiving poor responses. Often it’s because the recipient’s email providers are directing the initial contacts straight into their spam folders and they empty the folder periodically without first checking its contents.

Another important tip involves broadening your horizons. The more flexible you can be with your destination and dates, the easier it will be to arrange a swap. In the scope of things it’s highly unlikely that any home exchange company will be able to match you with home exchange partners living in exactly the area you’re hoping to visit and seeking a swap to your location at identical dates to your own. Compromises play a huge role in successful home exchanges!

About Your Listing

• Successful Home Exchanging - Finalizing Your Exchange
• Successful Home Exchanging - Contacting Fellow Home Exchangers
• Successful Home Exchanging - Good Photographs Are Important
• Successful Home Exchanging - Additional Listing Tactics
• Successful Home Exchanging - Setting Up Your Listing
• Successful Home Exchanging - More About Selecting A Club
• Successful Home Exchanging - Selecting a Club
• A Guide to Setting Up Your Home Exchange

Part Five of the Series

To help our Home Exchange members, I asked a photographer friend for a few basic tips for amateurs hoping to produce some attractive, illustrative pictures to include in their home exchange listings. His words of wisdom follow …..

Use Digital Cameras Only With Still Shots

Most home-use digital cameras have a one- or two-second delay before shooting. That’s perfectly fine when taking a picture of your new car or the vineyards in the wine country of California. Photography school instructors warn, however, that digital cameras are not always great for shooting moving objects such as pets, wildlife, children in action or sporting events. If you have to be sure you get the shot at an exact moment, a film camera will work best.

Use Flash Outdoors

While flash is traditionally thought of as an indoor-only feature, it also has many applications outside. The sun can create shadows over faces and images. Pros know that using flash outdoors can counteract the effects of the sun on your photos.

Get Close

It’s a common mistake in amateur photography to take pictures of people from a far distance. The normal result is a picture with people so small they aren’t identifiable. For better pictures, get up close, so you can see the person’s face well. This way you can clearly see the person or people in the picture.

Photography is a combination of creative art and science. The more creative you become, the more interest you’ll find in your pictures. The more you know about the science of photography, the more control you’ll have over the outcome. Read articles (there are hundreds, even thousands on the Internet), practice and experiment. Soon, you’ll be taking expert-quality photos just like the pros!

About Your Listing

• Successful Home Exchanging - Finalizing Your Exchange
• Successful Home Exchanging - Contacting Fellow Home Exchangers
• Successful Home Exchanging - Good Photographs Are Important
• Successful Home Exchanging - Additional Listing Tactics
• Successful Home Exchanging - Setting Up Your Listing
• Successful Home Exchanging - More About Selecting A Club
• Successful Home Exchanging - Selecting a Club
• A Guide to Setting Up Your Home Exchange

Part Four of the Series
It’s worth remembering that there are several ways you can “dress up” your basic home exchange listing. Here are some suggestions:

1. Set up your own personal web site dedicated to home exchanging. Have sections devoted to your family, your home, pets, neighborhood and more general location. Describe any previous home exchanges you may have taken.
   • Describe the amenities your home offers in great detail.
   • Go to town detailing special features.
   • Provide on-line links to any relevant manuals or fact sheets.
   • Illustrate the information with photographs.
2. Subscribe to one of the on-line photo albums such as PhotoBucket, MyPhotoAlbum or Flickr and pack it with lots of bright, cheerful, informative photographs.
3. If you have a video camera, use it to make a video introducing your home, family, pets, car (if it’s going to be part of an exchange), and add it to your online photo album (see suggestion 2 above).

Include links to these features in your online listing and also in every contact email you send out.

These features will make your listing much more interesting to prospective home exchange partners, but remember, don’t ever make the mistake of relying upon them to convey your message. Your listing with your online club is what will attract initial interest and if you fail there no-one will hang around to see any amount of extra features you may add.

About Your Listing

• Successful Home Exchanging - Finalizing Your Exchange
• Successful Home Exchanging - Contacting Fellow Home Exchangers
• Successful Home Exchanging - Good Photographs Are Important
• Successful Home Exchanging - Additional Listing Tactics
• Successful Home Exchanging - Setting Up Your Listing
• Successful Home Exchanging - More About Selecting A Club
• Successful Home Exchanging - Selecting a Club
• A Guide to Setting Up Your Home Exchange