A Home Exchange Needs Time To Arrange
I spoke at length the other day with a member who had joined ExchangeHomes.Com a month or so earlier and was becoming frustrated because she had joined with her travel plans for December already set in stone, airline tickets purchased. She told me that she had contacted several fellow members located in her intended location (France), but none were prepared to home exchange with her.
My first question was—when had she bought the airline tickets? She said August. Her ExchangeHomes.Com join date was September 29th.
I explained that successful home exchanging depends very much upon flexibility. Most experienced home exchangers will begin sending out exploratory inquiries a year and often eighteen months in advance of their planned trip. It just isn’t feasible to approach a home exchange in the way she had done: book her tickets, leave it for six weeks, then get around to emailing fellow members and expect them to meekly fall in with her intractable arrangements.
Had she considered that no-one is going to want to book a December flight at short notice—the price would be prohibitive. Also, with Christmas dates involved, what family would want to pack their bags and travel to Melbourne for no particular reason, other than to accommodate her?
On the other hand, had she given the entire home exchange a lot of thought and pre-planning, joined at the beginning of 2009 and begun making contacts then with likely partners, the outcome would more than likely been entirely different.
The moral is: the more time you allow, the easier your arrangements will become. The ExchangeHomes.Com website contains an immense about of information to guide new home exchangers. We even provide what we call our Hints & Advice Book which can be read online, or downloaded onto your computer in PDF format for you to read or even print.
For even more help and “take you by the hand” advice, we also recommend Athena Rickby’s great e-book Home Exchange Academy, which has been dubbed the home exchanger’s bible. It doesn’t recommend or promote any home exchange club, it’s just a wealth of great advice, backed by her 25+ years of worldwide home exchanging.
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