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Paula and Mark Williams watched in awe as fireworks lit the sky above a nearby medieval abbey during a vacation last summer in Bath, England. For that show, the Williamses had a perfect view from the vacation home in which they stayed. The house also offered separate bedrooms for their three daughters, a newly renovated kitchen and a view of boats gliding along the Kennet and Avon Canal just beyond the garden.
The price for these perfect accommodations? Zero, because the Williamses had traded their three-bedroom, Victorian-style house in San Francisco for a four-bedroom, Georgian house in Bath owned by Sarah and Richard Pooley, who have two teenage children. "It was the best vacation we've had as a family -- ever," says Paula.
A home-exchange vacation is part cultural immersion, part creature comfort and wholly a relief from overspending. You can find homes -- from palazzi in Italy to beachfront bungalows in the U.S. -- through exchange clubs, which have Web listings and directories you can browse for annual fees that range from $30 to $125. More than 30,000 people belong to these clubs. Roughly half are families with children still at home, a third are retirees, and the rest are younger couples and singles.
Aside from escaping hotel bills, a home exchange lets you save in other ways. By swapping cars you can avoid renting one -- most exchangers are willing to trade cars, say the top clubs. And having a kitchen cuts your restaurant tab. The Williams and Pooley families reckon they each saved about $2,400 in lodging and food, and $600 on car rentals, with their two-week trade.
Beyond the savings, houses afford comforts unimaginable at hotels. The Williamses had three floors in which to stretch out. The girls played piano and PlayStation 2. And Paula and Mark borrowed gear to play tennis in nearby Sydney Gardens, where novelist Jane Austen once strolled.
Getting to truly know the locals, who can give you the skinny on the best sights and bistros, is another advantage. Anne and Barry Mahoney of Denver learned that last summer when they spent three weeks near the town of Iseo in northern Italy. The locals introduced them to a restaurant that grew its own ingredients and made its own wine but was not listed in the Mahoneys' guidebooks. "We felt we were really experiencing the country with the insights of somebody who lived there," says Anne.
The latest improvement in the home-swapping process is digital photography, which makes assembling a house-highlights album easy. Paula Williams wanted to invite a disabled friend to visit while the family was in England, so she had Richard Pooley e-mail her views of his home's stairways. If you don't have a digital camera, most clubs will scan in your traditional photos and post them online at no charge.
Few complaints
As successful as most trades are, on rare occasions swappers arrive to find an unwelcome surprise, as home-exchange veterans Katya and Ted Isaac can attest. The retirees, who live in Kaneohe, Hawaii, have done 90 exchanges since 1985. One hitch occurred when they swapped houses with a couple near Vienne, France. The French provincial house was exactly as its owners had described it, but, says Ted, "it was sandwiched between two highways and a railway."
The Isaacs hadn't asked in advance about the noise level of the neighborhood. But no line of questioning is foolproof. Says Ted: "People are proud of their homes, so they may not tell you things that are important to you, but not to them."
The Isaacs say a couple of guests have given their house a thumping. Their most troublesome guest broke their Jacuzzi, stained one of the walls and wouldn't pay for repairs. Yet Ted considers that Guest From Hell an exception to a string of otherwise flawless trades, totaling about $250,000 in free travel.
Perhaps the main source of gripes among exchangers comes from different housekeeping standards. "You want to make sure that Oscar and Felix never cross paths," says Helen Bergstein, president of the Digsville Home Exchange Club. The solution: Each family should hire a cleaning service to tidy up after it leaves.
Overall, complaints are rare. Out of 12,000 members, perhaps four or five a year contact HomeLink International to complain about their exchange partner. Other clubs report correspondingly few complaints.
The right club
The clubs make it easy to find swappers, but you need to strategize to land a trade that's stellar. And you can better score a swap in your target destination by joining a club that most closely matches your needs. There are five major clubs and about 13 specialty clubs (such as one for seniors only). The best reason for joining a particular club is that its listings blanket the region you're most interested in visiting. Intervac, the club through which the Williamses contacted the Pooleys, has 7,000 members, of whom nearly 1,300 are Americans and more than three times that many are Western Europeans. By contrast, 3,300 of the 6,000 members of HomeExchange.com are Americans, and the rest are mostly Western Europeans and Australians.
Another distinction among clubs: exclusivity. Most allow only members to view phone numbers, addresses and private e-mail addresses. But "open network" clubs, such as HomeExchange.com, set up blind e-mail addresses at which members receive inquiries. Members can then arrange swaps with nonmembers. Although members-only clubs say they offer more privacy, open-network clubs say they supply a larger pool of prospects.
Location, location
In appraising your home's potential allure to traders, keep in mind that a house's location determines its popularity, with typical vacation destinations, such as beaches, ranking as most desirable. Marjie and Marc Raizman live in Boulder, Colo., and advertise that they're close to the Rocky Mountains and national parks. With that bait, they've scored ten exchanges since 1996.
Exchangers say that to line up a swap, you need to make the initial contact at least five months ahead. Early planning makes it easy to book low airfares, and you may need that much time to ask questions and arrange the particulars. Parties themselves decide if it's an even swap between houses that are not comparable in amenities, such as between a rowhouse in a U.S. city and a 25-room beachfront estate in Spain.
Exchanges between families of the same size are often the happiest. The reason: Each house is equipped with amenities that suit the other. "We've exchanged four times, and we have stayed in homes that have toys and bikes for the kids," says Debbie Benjamin of Belmont, Mass.
Often the biggest stumbling block to making a house trade is matching up family vacation schedules. If your destination is Europe, for example, you should know that Europeans traditionally go on vacation in late July and August. Trades at other times may prove elusive.
The clubs are matchmakers, not peacemakers, so it's up to you and your counterpart to nail down the details. Most home exchanges are confirmed by e-mail and spell out the dates and general terms of the exchange. Those terms should cover what household duties you plan to do for each other, such as collecting mail and watering plants.
Most home exchangers don't use contracts, although many clubs offer model forms. Although signed contracts may promise compensation to one side should the other back out, the legal fees and time spent to enforce it usually outstrip the loss. A common courtesy among swappers, though, is for each family to have a backup plan -- such as staying with relatives -- that would still allow a home to be available for the visiting family.
To avoid potential trouble, insurance policies on both sides need to be checked for coverage. In the U.S., homeowners policies typically remain in effect during a guest's stay, and most car-insurance policies cover incidental drivers. But British and Irish swappers we spoke with say they had to buy extra auto and homeowners insurance to cover guests.
One final tip: Leave some food in your refrigerator to spare your jet-lagged guests from having to forage their first day on unfamiliar turf. Such thoughtful gestures can help transform trading partners into friends.
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