How to Find a Vacation Swap

Looking to live like you’re in The Holiday for a bit? We had a Paris-Los Angeles home exchange and here’s how to find a vacation swap so you can do the same.

If you’ve been around these parts for a while, you might remember our home exchange experience when we went to Paris. It was the absolute greatest experience — we traded homes for nearly a month with a Parisian couple.

They came to stay in our place and we went to stay in theirs. Truly, it was the greatest trip of my life, and I loved living like a local.

The experience was positive from beginning to end. And now we’re looking to plan our next exchange!

I just love the idea of being able to open your home to a like-minded traveler, and of being able to experience the way other people live for a short time.

So I thought it could be cool to share the process of how we find a vacation swap or home exchange when we are looking to travel.

Psst — before you get the details, be sure to enter your info below to join my VIP group. I send these folks my very best travel and family ideas, tricks, and hacks!

Where To Find Vacation Swaps

First and foremost, I always start by looking through the HomeExchange website. It’s something that I stumbled on early in our marriage when we wanted to to a lot of traveling but wanted to do it on a budget.

The site makes searching for a house swap so easy, and extremely safe. All of the members have profiles so you can see how many exchanges they’ve done, the various ways they’re verified, and more.

Here is a great post with lots more info.

Prepping Your Home for a Swap

When you’re starting to look for an exchange, always first make sure that your own home’s profile is up to date, that there are plenty of recent photos, and that the descriptions of your home are clear.

You’re more likely to find exchanges or gain credit for allowing others to stay in your home if it is represented well in the images and information.

Next, zero in on the places that you’d like to travel. In looking for an exchange, I’ve found that it’s helpful to be somewhat open on your travel plans when it comes to a date range and a destination.

It opens up greater possibilities when it comes to finding someone who might be looking to exchange in your part of the world.

Narrowing Down Home Exchange Options

Once you’ve decided on a few places, start your search.

One cool tool that HomeExchange has is the ability to enter a search for the country or city you’d like to go, and then filter results by other HomeExchange members who also want to travel to the country or city where you live.

I use that almost every time I search, because right away it narrows down your search results to the people who would consider an exchange. It’s pretty useful.

Now comes the fun part! Once the search results pop up, scroll through them all to find places that might be a good fit for your family, your needs, or the type of trip you’re looking to have.

It sounds silly, but often I’ll look for images of homes that have a similar aesthetic to our own, because that could potentially set us off on a good foot for starting an exchange.

I also look for family profiles with kids of a similar age to our own, so I know that our homes would work for each other.

Keep Track of Options

While searching, if you find anything even remotely interesting, always make sure to add it to your favorites or bookmark it somehow so you don’t forget the listing.

From there, go back and look through them again and narrow them down to your favorites.

Once you have some favorites, start contacting the owners! I recommend reaching out directly through a reputable vacation swap or home exchange site without exchanging any personal information.

After you make contact with someone, you can elect to continue your conversation through the site, or trade information and go private.

I would absolutely recommend that you arrange a few phone calls and FaceTime or Skype sessions with your exchange partner to make sure that you feel comfortable.

For our first exchange, we did Skype tours of each other’s homes and chatted multiple times to make sure everything was taken care of.

Would you Vacation Swap?

Think of all the possibilities! When you’re utilizing vacation swaps it opens up new avenues of travel that you might not usually explore.

It’s such a cool way to experience the world, and can’t recommend it enough. Have you ever traded homes with anyone? Would you? xoxo

This post is not sponsored; however, HomeExchange graciously offered us a free year membership for our honest feedback about our experience.