Exchanging Vacation Homes

Spring is here. Temperature is rising and summer is not that far away. Perhaps, it is time to think about your summer vacation -- especially if you are interested in spending the summer in a home away from home.

In recent years, swapping or exchanging homes located throughout the world is gaining more and more popularity as an attractive part of taking vacation. For an annual membership of around $50, you may enlist your home on an exchange site. If someone is interested in your home, they will email you and when you come across anything that you like, you email them. Finally you decide to cut a deal depending on mutual preferences and options. Some people even go beyond to exchange their cars too. You can even agree to take care of each other's pets.

Three leading (and Big too!) house-swap sites are: HomeExchange.com, Intervac.com, Homelink.org . Besides these there is SinglesHomeExchange.com for swapping apartments and also some quite interesting ones like TeacherHomeSwap.com which provides the specialized service of finding other teacher swappers who are very likely to search for houses for similar vacation dates.

Even with so many websites available, it might not be very easy to find an exchange home of your choice. Vacation is precious and you may not afford to spoil it by your hurriedly-made choice. So, start early, plan properly, have a talk with the exchangers and take sufficient time to decide how your summer home should be. Many people who did that say that they want to do it again. It's worth the trouble and time.