Home Exchange University » Home Exchange Basics

Yours Truly Podcasts on www.KnowYourTrade.com

Deren Monday — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 04:11:54 +0000

The experts at www.KnowYourTrade.com recently interviewed Home Exchange University founder John Mensinger.

In the interview John discusses:

The origin of Home Exchange University
How he became interested in home exchange
Preparing your home for exchange when children are involved
How to land a fantastic home exchange even if you don’t reside in a premiere local

Deren S. Monday is co-founder of HomeExchangeUniversity.com and father of two. He is also a remodeling coach teaching others how to make their homes exchange-worthy. Deren can be reached at dsm_at_homeexchangeuniversity_dot_com.

Home Exchange 101 Lesson 3 – Finding Your Ideal Home Exchange

John Mensinger & Deren Monday — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 01:36:09 +0000

Our last lesson focused on the mechanics of searching for home swaps using www.Homelink.org as an example. Now we turn our attention to finding what you want by using your newly acquired knowledge.

The Basic Method

If you are searching for an exchange in a particular country or region, you could choose browse listings and then click on that country or a region within it. You will get a summary with photos and basic information. You might find you can quickly choose the most interesting possibilities from the photos and information. You click on the photo and get the full listing.

The Advanced Method

Alternatively, you could use the advanced search. With the advanced search you choose a country for your destination and also:

limit the results to those wanting to go to your country
indicate the dates and duration of your exchange
ensure the house is large enough to accommodate your party
indicate if you are looking for exchange partners with or without children
declare if automobile use is required
avoid or embrace smokers

Once entering the above criteria you get a summary list. Unfortunately this summary does not contain photos; you have to click on the listings, which are sorted by country and/or city or region. If you have a basic understanding of a country you can first look at listings in those parts of the country that interest you.

Hot Pants Hot Lists

Homelink.org has a great feature called hot lists, which collate members indicating they are looking actively for an exchange. You may choose the 7 day, 14 day, or 30 day hot list, which is the elapsed time since the member indicated they were looking.

Homelink.org allows you to save a listing and make comments on it. You can save several listings and examine them over days or weeks as you wish.

Real World Example

You and your family should carefully consider what you are looking for in an exchange home. Here is my family’s list. The percentage indicates our success rate in getting that criteria:

Location

Country where we speak the language or where English is widely spoken (100%)
Region with enough tourist attractions to keep us busy (85%)
We like discovering new regions (70%)
Scenic or beautiful countryside (85%)
Activities of interest to the children (65%)
Pleasant and tranquil as opposed to noisy (100%)
If near big city, good public transport links (100%)
Congenial to bicycling (100%)
Not too hot during the summer (85%)

The above list explains why we have traded twice in Stockholm, three times in France, and five times in rural England and Wales. Three of the British exchanges were in National Parks. The other two were in officially designated Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB). 70% of our locations have been excellent; the remaining 30% were good.

The Home

Comfortable, casual, modern, kid friendly (85%)
A bedroom for each child (85%)
Master bedroom, hopefully with attached bathroom (45%)
Pleasant garden with table to eat outside sheltered from sun or rain (85%)
Exceptional views from the house or garden (57%)
Car, newer or larger instead of smaller or older (60%)
Good quality well maintained bicycles of the right size with helmets, locks, and pumps (80%)

The above bicycle figure is high because in France and England I have my own bicycles available. Otherwise it would be more like 45%. We would rate 78% of our exchange homes as excellent. 22% had minor problems but were still good.

The Family

Friendly, trustworthy, patient, understanding (93%)
Two or more children in their home (100%)
Spoke English (100%)
Upper middle class (100%)
Highly educated (100%)

Most home exchange participants are outstanding. We have seen 43% of them since our exchange was completed. I consider 30% to be close friends. We remain in touch with 78% of them. 100% of these families had neat and clean homes and left our place the same way. 100% did anything we asked and often more to make our exchange a success.

You can use your checklist to get an idea of the home exchange opportunities that appeal. The information and the photos of the listing should give you a good idea if it will meet your needs. If you are unsure, you can do further research. That’s a future topic in Home Exchange 101.

Click here to go to Home Exchange 101 Lesson 4: First Contact.

Special Events and Why I Roll with the Queen

John Mensinger — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 16:03:53 +0000

A favorite aspects of home exchange is access to special events. Sure, international travel, often leads to attending unique cultural events. But home exchange reveals a completely different perspective. Your not just attending the typical tourist traps. Your exchange partners, their friends and their family will certainly help you identify and gain attendance to some little-known events that others may not even know about. Here are some snapshots from my past travels…

Stroll on Over to the Tour de France

My family arranged for an exchange near Lausanne, Switzerland last summer. We had planned on beautiful alpine scenery, Swiss efficiency, and tasty fondue. A bonus was special events during our three week stay. The Tour de France passed within a half hour of our exchange home. I parked the car 50 meters from the route. We had a pleasant two hours in Romont, a town on a hill with castle and intact city walls. After the race had passed through it took a minute to reach the car and 30 minutes to drive home. We had time to see the last two hours of that day’s stage through Switzerland on the television.

Making F. Scott Fitzgerald Proud

We were also less than 30 minutes from Montreux, famous for its Jazz festival. You can pay several hundred Swiss Francs to hear the world’s best musicians. Or you can pay nothing. Parking is free, the shuttle bus is free, and there are free concerts in parks alongside Lake Geneva. I loved the Chipping Camden School Swing Orchestra and their female vocalists that did a wonderful job on Andrews Sisters standards from the 1940’s. Besides music there are hundreds of vendors selling drinks in a coconut, Nespresso, Sushi, African handicrafts, and life’s other non necessities. The music continues until 5am in the morning, though we would leave after the fireworks show over the lake around 11pm.

In Good Company with the Queen

It pays to investigate special events in advance. We were in Northern England, less than two hours from Edinburgh, which has its high brow festival as well as a scruffy alternative known as the fringe. There is an iconic show of military precision and music at Edinburgh Castle known as the Tattoo. We bought our tickets months in advance and were at the same performance as her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the II, who was celebrating the 50th year of her reign. It was a fabulous show.

Feeling Festive

Minor events can be delightful. We were in Shropshire one summer and our town was having its annual festival. One of the organizers was a neighbor. We attended a lecture on the local mountains, a jazz concert in the parish church, and an organ recital in an ancient looking church with a thatched roof, which it turns out was built in the 1920’s. Our neighbor arranged for tickets and reserved seats. We had met a few locals during our stay. It was fun that at each of these performances we would meet someone we knew.

I Did Not Joust, Though…

In France one year we were ten minutes from the town of Clisson. They have the Medievales, a medieval festival. Hundreds of folks dress up from that period and the castle grounds have exhibits, food stalls, and fun activities, such as shooting a bow and arrow. There are markets and stages with exhibitions, plays, and musical performances, most with costumed medieval characters.

Just Missed It

My only regret is that last summer we departed Switzerland on August 1, which is their national day. I know our exchange partners wanted to be home that day, in the future we will plan on an extra day in the hotel. I don’t know what we missed, but it would have been folkloric and historic with lots of food, wine and beer, and fireworks.

Try Cool Stuff You Will (Almost) Never Buy

John Mensinger & Deren Monday — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 23:35:40 +0000

In the United States we have huge warehouse stores called Costco. Costco sells mass quantities of everything, including socks, ground beef, kahki pants and cheaply produced hardback books. Most of the time you can find these things on the same isle.

One Costco feature is their incessant offering of food samples. You can’t turn a corner in Costco without running into a delightful 60-something “sales associate” who shoves a cracker in your face and shrieks “try this.” You can’t deny her. This is her job. You simply resort to your toddler years and eat what is forcefully put in your face. You can sample nearly everything in the store.

Home exchange can be a lot like Costco, except without the assault and battery from the “sales associate.” It allows you to sample some pretty great stuff.

If This Bed Is a Rockin’…

Our home in Denmark had a waterbed which spiced up our love life at the cost of mild motion sickness. The kids found a world class array of Lego sets to play with. Needless to say the whole family was entertained.

Splish Splash

One lovely home in rural England had an oak beamed conservatory (just like in the board game Clue!) with the Rolls Royce of hot tubs. It had more water jets than Versailles. When I told our teenage kids the missus and I were going to use it without wearing bathing suits they ran to their rooms and locked the doors. Just what we wanted…

The Fast and the Furious

May I interest you in some irony? We had to go to Stockholm, Sweden to drive motor vehicles we would never consider buying. No Volvo or SAAB, instead an American Jeep, Ford SUV, and Mercedes station wagon. We recommend the latter as a perfect vehicle with only one flaw: initial purchase price.

I am a Barista!

In the Netherlands we had a fully automatic espresso machine. Beans and water go in one end, you push a button, fresh coffee. We were so impressed we bought one for our business, and now our employees sport an impressive caffeine dependency.

Another clever device was Nespresso, a proprietary coffee making system from Nestle, which graced our home in Switzerland. You can choose from different styles and strengths of coffee, put the cartridge in, clamp it down, and push the button. A quick quality coffee for you and 50 cents revenue for Nestle Corporation.

Box ‘o’ Debauchery

Although frugal I have never bought wine in a cardboard box. We arrived at a home in Provence, they had thoughtfully left a box each of red, white, and rose for us. The wine was from the local cooperative and was tasty. It was far too easy at any time to take a nip of Rosé from the fridge. Once opened the wine should stay fresh in the box for several weeks, this wasn’t proved as each box in our care only lasted a few days. This is an innovation we won’t try at home as it makes it too easy to over consume.

What will you discover new on your next homeswap?

Deren S. Monday is co-founder of HomeExchangeUniversity.com and father of two. He also dabbles in on-line marketing planning and implementation. Deren can be reached at dsm_at_homeexchangeuniversity_dot_com.

Home Exchange 101 – Orientation

John Mensinger & Deren Monday — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 23:33:44 +0000

Our mission at HomeExchangeUniversity.com is to educate home exchangers, both novice and expert. We commence this education with a 10-post series titled Home Exchange 101. We hope you enjoy and, most importantly, use this information to create fantastic international home exchange vacations!

Step 1: Is Home Exchange Right for You?

Well, since your reading this post, its safe to say you are willing to at least explore the option of home exchange. Good for you!

You can investigate the process without spending any money, but the faculty here recommends spending sixty to two hundred dollars to join one or more home exchange agencies. To benefit the most from home exchange invest time in understanding the process and evaluating home exchange opportunities. And get your family involved too!

Now remember, joining a home exchange site is NOT committing to a home exchange. No one is going to show up on your porch the day after joining and tell you to be on your way across the Atlantic. (As delightful as that sounds…) You are simply paying for the opportunity to list your home and view the listings of others. At this point you haven’t committed to trading your home. You are only committed when you agree with a specific family that you want to trade for their home. This comes later in the process.

Let’s face it: The prospect of letting another family use your home can cause a bit (or a lot) of anxiety. So how do you fight this anxiety? You take steps to minimize your risks. You develop confidence in the other family before you agree to an exchange. We will discuss how to do this in detailed subsequent posts. And really, the anxiety boils down to this exploration of logic: Is your home safer empty for a few weeks or is it safer inhabited by a well-researched home exchange family? You can decide for yourself, but we will take the exchange family over an empty home any day!

Step 2: Sign Up!

The next step is to sign up for one or more home exchange agencies. These companies charge a fee, ranging from nothing to $200 per year. They provide an Internet marketplace for exchange families to find partners. We recommend you visit our friends at www.knowyourtrade.com; they review and analyze home exchange agencies world-wide. The faculty here will add additional insight on specific agencies in months to come.

Once you chose an agency, set up your home exchange listing. A listing is simply an advertisement of your home and location. It explains to other members why your home, region, and family are an ideal choice for exchange. Unlike commercial advertisements, we highly recommend everything in your listing be absolute truth, though be sure to “sell” your home by highlighting its many benefits. In fact, our team here at HomeExcahngeUniversity.com is currently developing a Home Exchange Listing Tutorial that will debut in a few months. We will automatically link this post once it is available.

Step 3: Search the World…

Once your listing is up there are two ways to find an exchange:

First, you can wait for others to find your home and suggest an exchange. We call this the wallflower approach. If your home is a mansion in San Francisco or a Chateau in the Loire Valley this is the best method. (And if this is you, we want to exchange with you immediately! So, please contact us at…)

Second, you should consider rockin’ the search tools on your home exchange website to find other members with whom you might like to swap.

A Few Points to Ponder

The Automobile: An important question is whether you want to trade the use of your automobile as part of your home exchange. Approximately 50% of home exchanges involve automobile exchange as well. We devote an entire class to this important topic.

The Negotiation: Once you find one or more promising exchange families the negotiations begin. Your goal: Figure out if their home and region fit your exchange goals. While doing so, be sure to lay a foundation of trust and respect. If the negotiations proceed, these first few interactions set great precedence for all future interactions. Once again, this critical issue will be covered in subsequent posts.

The Preparation: Once agreeing to an exchange the preparation begins. This includes making sure your house is clean and in good condition, create a user’s manual to help the incoming family get the most out of your home and region, and preparing your family for your upcoming vacation.

The Exchange: Finally there is the exchange itself. This should be easier than the preparations but usually there are a few surprises, both good and otherwise. As the old saying goes, “Forewarned is forearmed.”

Be sure to join us for our next class in Home Exchange 101!

John Mensinger is co-founder of HomeExchangeuniversity.com and an experienced home exchanger. His passion is helping others experience the enjoyment (and cost savings!) of home exchange. John can be reached at jm_at_homeexchangeuniversity_dot_com.
Deren S. Monday is co-founder of HomeExchangeUniversity.com and father of two. He also dabbles in on-line marketing planning and implementation. Deren can be reached at dsm_at_homeexchangeuniversity_dot_com.

What is Home Exchange?

John Mensinger & Deren Monday — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 23:43:49 +0000

The Art of Win-Win

The basic definition of home exchange, or house exchange, is that you trade the use of your home with another family for a set period of time. While you are enjoying the nuances of their home they are visiting your town and staying in your home. I found this idea compelling years ago as it would reduce the cost of traveling abroad, which was an expensive habit. You have a comfortable home away from home on vacation, you have your own kitchen, and often you trade cars as well. Home exchange is a win-win transaction. Both partners of the exchange are better off than they would be without the trade.

Swedish Luxury

Sometimes it is a big win. We ended up in Stockholm one year in a large and luxurious home in the affluent suburb of Djursholm. We were to learn later that it had been chosen as the place in Sweden with the highest quality of life. Looking in the newspaper real estate pages we also discovered that it had the most expensive homes in the Stockholm region. Bringing up the average was the island home of one of the Abba band members, not to mention residences for the ambassadors of several countries.

The summer weather was gorgeous and it was a five minute trip on bicycle to the beach where we could swim, relax under an apple tree, and admire the rocky and forested islands of the Stockholm Archipelago. It was three minutes on foot to the train stop, and then 15 minutes to Stockholm, a lovely city surrounded by lakes, the sea, and forests, with more palaces, museums, and historical buildings than you could see in three weeks.

Building Relationships

The best part of the experience was making friends and beginning to understand Swedish culture, customs, and way of life. Our exchange partners arranged for us to meet their friends. One man took us on a boat ride through the Archipelago. Another hosted us for coffee and cake at his summer home. A couple took us out on the town, a sort of pub crawl but with champagne instead of beer. I made friends with an older gentleman who asked me what I thought of President Bush. He and his wife took our family to his summer home on an island where we gathered wild blueberries, went swimming, talked, and drank. I admire the Swedes command of the simple comforts of life.

What We Brought Home

Since that exchange we notice news about Sweden. Pickled herring and smoked salmon are usually found in our refrigerator and there is crisp bread in the pantry. Most importantly, we have become good friends with the family with whom we traded houses. Their daughter is attending a California university and we have seen them several times, both in Sweden and California.

We couldn’t stay away from Stockholm. We had another three week exchange there five years after our first visit. We saw all our old friends. Our new exchange partners arranged for neighbors to take us on their boat in the Archipelago, followed by dinner at their summer home, washed down with schnapps from the island. Yes, we had done most of this before and could do it again and again. We managed to see many, but not all of the palaces, museums, and historical building we had missed on our first visit.

What is home exchange to you?