Rules of Home Swapping
The other day a lady on the phone asked me “what are the rules of home exchanging?”
I suppose that the first rule is that money never changes hands. The homes that are exchanged are viewed as a barter, never as individual values weighed one against another. This fundamental principle is the one thing that people very new to the concept of home swapping find most difficult to understand. In this cut-throat society where people are indoctrinated to measure their success by the square footage of their home, or the inflated price they were willing to pay for it, many find it extremely difficult to understand why anyone would ever want to exchange their four thousand square foot home in Marina del Rey for a nine hundred square foot apartment in Kensington.
These people are surely looking at home exchanging from completely the wrong slant. It shouldn’t be about whether any party has enough money to own a four thousand square feet home with a pool, and an ocean view. It’s about opportunities for people to experience someone else’s lifestyle, to see how the locals really live.
With the advent of the Internet and the ability for people to illustrate their home exchange offers with lengthy descriptions and lots of photographs, there may now be a leaning towards proclaiming size, value, furnishings and possessions. Newcomers to home exchanging should nevertheless continue to see it for what it really is: an opportunity for like-minded people to swap homes for a positive experience. The size of the homes or their value should not become an issue.
© ExchangeHomes.com All rights reserved.
