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Home Exchange Blog
ExchangeHomes.com has a Last Minute Exchanges front page category, but I don’t like it and we monitor inclusions in it very carefully.

We monitor it because initially, it was available as an option in our Members’ Admin Area, but it was immediately perceived as a second, high profile means to promote a home exchange. Consequently, virtually every member added their listing and very quickly diluted its purpose and effectiveness.

Rather than subscribe to Last Minute Exchanges themselves, for a long time now, members have had to request us to add their listings for them, and we scrutinize them carefully.

First we enforce a 90 day rule. The main listing has to actually display required home exchange dates within the next 90 days.

Second, we check the web logs associated with that listing to ascertain that the member has already initiated email contacts with fellow members in an attempt to arrange a home swap. All too often members will join, sit back and expect offers to roll into their email boxes with zero effort on their part, then panic as their vacation dates loom closer on the horizon.

Of course these members are not precluded from the “LME” list, but their lack of proactive effort indicates that they have not understood the very fundamental two-way effort involved in both finding and arranging a successful home swap and for a second time we nudge them towards reading all the useful articles included on the ExchangeHomes.com web site for their guidance.

When members first join, their Welcome Email lists and explains all the online help that is available to them, but we long ago realized that a significant number of new members never read this email in its entirety and even less bother to read the published help it directs them to.

But to return to the opening paragraph where I admit I don’t like the Last Minute Exchange category. Why don’t I? Because by its very existence it encourages new, inexperienced members to join under the misconception that a home swap can be arranged swiftly with minimal contact and little discussion between the parties involved.

Quite the contrary. The most successful and as a result, memorable home exchanges are those where the parties involved asked innumerable questions, persisted until every item was responded to, every issue clarified, every ‘I’ dotted and ‘T’ crossed. And that takes time. Time invested in preparing a home exchange is just as important as the exchange itself.

As I always tell members, home swapping is 100% founded upon trust, and trust certainly cannot be derived of a few scant emails. To trust someone you first have to interact with them, discover whether they are receptive to your questions, understand your need for clarification on points which to them may seem inconsequential, and ask questions themselves.

When the actual home exchange rolls around the parties involved should be in a “comfort zone”: comfortable with each other’s home, its amenities, its surroundings and location, and MOST important, comfortable with each other. And arriving at that point takes TIME!

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