In June HomeExchange quietly introduced a new luxury home membership level: the HomeExchange Collection. This is exclusively for home exchangers with luxury properties. Currently membership is by invitation only, and comes with a $400 price tag. The price is a discount off the planned $1000 annual fee.
A reader shared their invitation email with me:
Your home is exceptional, and we would love to have you as part of HomeExchange Collection, a luxury home exchange community.
By invitation only, this community brings together a curated selection of beautiful homes and allows you to benefit from personalized services.
Since you’re already a HomeExchange member, joining HomeExchange Collection will be easy. The features and access to the Collection homes will be added to your existing HomeExchange account.
This project was launched a month ago, and more than 100 prestigious homes in 20 countries have already joined the community. Join us for a sneak peek.
The Benefits of HomeExchange Collection
- Unlimited access to premium homes with exceptional features
- Ability to contact members of both the HomeExchange and HomeExchange Collection communities
- Professional photographs of your home
- Customized support from a dedicated team
- Personalized protection and support in case of cancellation
- Property damage protection up to $2,000,000
- Exclusive loyalty benefits
- 1,250 GuestPoints upon joining
Is there a market for luxury home swap networks?
It will be interesting to see if there is a significant market of people looking to exchange with other “premium” homes and who also want high touch services and are willing to pay a high price for this. The risk to prospective members, and to the network, is in the numbers. There’s not much benefit to this exclusive club if it doesn’t provide desired swap opportunities.
The original HomeExchange.com network offered a similar elite membership option. They called it HomeExchange Gold. About five years ago they rebranded this as a premium service for a higher price. I believe this option was dropped years ago, possibly before the integration with GuesttoGuest at the end of 2018. This new HomeExchange Collection looks like a reboot of HomeExchange Gold.
Image from HomeExchange FAQ explaining how members can easily find other HomeExchange Collection homes. The old HomeExchange Gold service used a similar black background styling.
I did find some FAQ pages on the HomeExchange Collection which explain: “HomeExchange Collection was created after we noticed that a part of our community was looking for something different when it comes to home exchanging. These members were looking for experiences with luxury and high-standing homes only. Therefore, we decided to create an exclusive place for them and HomeExchange Collection was born.”
There are a few home swap networks, like Third Home and Exclusive Exchanges, focused on people with luxury vacation homes. Even if the market demand for this is relatively small, it makes sense that HomeExchange would try to gain this market segment. And the ability to selectively up-sell existing members certainly makes the marketing easier.
I have to admit that this “opportunity” made me laugh. It’s seems like another money grab to me. We, in fact, received an invitation to join this supposedly rarified group and our home is comfortable but certainly not luxury. If scrolling through their listings was the only way vetted the properties they invited to join, they will likely see that they missed the mark on this one.