Living Like a Local With a Home Exchange
OK I admit, even after spending the last couple of decades traveling for work, traveling for fun and traveling to produce the television series Travel With Kids, I was not very familiar with the concept of home exchange. I had heard rumors about people swapping houses. But it almost read like an urban legend…always a friend of a friend or a distant cousin who had exchanged houses and loved it. Then, I found HomeExchange.com and had an a-ha moment! It does exist and there are literally thousands of people doing it…on this site alone!
What is home exchange you might ask. Well, it’s as simple as it sounds; you are trading homes with another couple/family for a period of time. You register your home on the site and let people know where you are interested in going. Then, you are matched with people interested in going where your home is. Think of it like matchmakers for home-owning travelers.
Sounds great, right? Well, the skeptical side of me went…hmmm sounds too good. I’m not sure if I feel comfortable with strangers staying in my house. So, I talked to other families who have exchanged homes before (there are tens of thousands of families with listings). One family who exchanged for a home in Paris talked about how they Skyped with the family in Paris for months before the exchange. The kids even “introduced” the exchange family kids to kids in their neighborhood during an on-line tour. Another couple told me about the apartment they exchanged for in New York City. They said how nice it was to be immersed in a local neighborhood and hanging out where the locals do. They had also met the couple they were exchanging with through emails and phone calls prior to the exchange. This helped ease my comfort level. You weren’t exchanging with strangers you were trading homes with new friends. Any many become life long friends.
So, now that my comfort in the process was at ease I started to look at all the other benefits of home exchange. Staying in a local neighborhood was at the top of my list. To me traveling is about immersing in another culture (even if its within the same country). So staying in a local neighborhood, with some pre-made local friends and the low down on the best local places is key. The other important factor, especially for traveling families, is budget. There is no fees or costs in exchanging homes, so doing a home exchange eliminates lodging cost on the trip. There is a small monthly fee for the website service, but the money saved on hotels (especially for larger families who have to take more than one room) off sets that in one or two nights. 
The other huge benefit I foresaw was having a kitchen. Often times when you are traveling, especially for long periods of time like we do when we are filming for the show, you get tired of eating out…and the restaurant bills add up. With a kitchen, you can plan for some meals in.
So, we decided to move forward with an exchange last month. We found a house in Los Angeles to exchange with during our filming of Travel With Kids Los Angeles and made plans. We emailed the home owners, who gave us an excellent run down of their neighborhood, Redondo Beach. They provided us detailed information of the house and their neighbors. As the day grew closer, we exchanged several phone calls to iron out details and expectations.
The house in Redondo was even better than described. It was a short walk to neighborhood restaurants. The quiet streets of the neighborhood were the perfect place for our boys to expend energy at the end of the day. They even met some local kids and helped with a bake sale and went hot tubbing. The spacious living area and gorgeous patios meant there was plenty of room for all of us to spread out. And, of course, the kitchen meant we could eat some meals in…especially breakfast.
When we got back from Los Angeles, we talked to the home owners a couple of times. They had fun on their vacation and we had a blast on ours. The exchange was a success! After a couple of days, I was back on HomeExchange.com checking out what other homes were available. Downside: It’s addicting seeing all the exciting places you can go; the possibilities seem endless!
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