be interested to hear about anyones experience with house swaps, both good & bad.
Considering joining an international house swap website.
House swaps - anyone had any experience ?
travelwiz on 19/02/2015 - 10:02
Comments
spoke to someone last week, who raved about it. He said, he stayed in an enormous 5 star house, that he would not have otherwise be able to afford, if renting.
Yes there are fees. One site we looked at was about $200 a year.
Which website are you considering joining?
looking at homeexchange.com as it seems to have more places to stay, in areas we want to go to.
Seems some are based in Europe & therefore Euro-centric & others in USA & North America-centric.
Cool, might have a look at it myself someday. Would be interested to hear of your experiences if you try it.
Found a free short term trial. Have to give your credit card, but it says, you can cancel at no cost, as long as do it within free trial period.
Guess am going to start emailing like crazy as soon as join up.
Yes, part of our future retirement plan.
Hoping for long stays of 2-3 months in small towns outside capital cities as a base.
Year 1 - Spain, year 2 - Italy, year 3 -France etc and spending 6-9 months in SEA, and returning home for 1-2 months before finally being returned home in an urn.Sounds like you're only having 4 years of retirement, LOL.
Am a member of houseswapholiays.com.au and have swapped 3 times now, 2 within 5 hours of driving and one on the other side of Australia to us.
Nothing but positive experience for us. Each time it's a worry if the swap is genuine, especially when swapping with someone who has no reviews on their profile, but we found after speaking to the interested swappers a few times you get a feel as to if they are the genuine and the type of family/people you want to swap with.
Each time we have swapped it was definitely an upgrade for us from our ordinary suburban home
Don't know on the cost of membership as we got in before they started charging. We estimate that we saved at least $2k on our last trip (10 day trip to Adelaide, party of 4)
I'd be interested in hearing experiences too, it's something we are considering doing in the next few years. Although I'd imagine it varies wildly between people. Like all things I'm sure there are great stories and horror stories.