Mi Casa es Su Casa, Home Swapping for Free Vacations

Filed in archive Travel on July 10, 2006

Right now, someone in France wants to live in your house and wants you to live in theirs. Well, that might depend on where you live, but it's definitely true that people around the world are swapping homes to vacation free of charge. Web sites like HomeExchange.com and the similarly-named ExchangeHomes.com give you the opportunity to offer up your home to others for their vacation. In return, you stay in their homes for your vacation. The only thing you pay is the fee to the Web site for helping you find the property swap.

It's a neat idea, if you live in a place that people naturally want to spend time in. I saw plenty of listings of people wanting to swap their European home to go to California or hawaii, but not a ton looking for a stay in Nebraska or Ohio (which is going to hurt my chances).

However, this article from Eileen Ambrose in The Baltimore Sun suggests that even the less-than-touristy towns can find home swappers, often because those in other countries will have relatives who have come here and would like them to visit. So I'm scouring the listings in Poland, Czech Republic, India, Romania and others from where I know people are immigrating to my neck of the woods.

I'm not sure how I would feel about living in someone else's home for a week or two. More than that, I'm not sure that I want someone living in my home and seeing my poor cleaning habits. But if it means a free trip to Poland, I might just suck it up and go for it.