There’s a lot of discussion about the importance of response rates among the home exchange community. Some feel strongly that it is important to show respect for every request for a swap by responding, ideally something personalized. While it’s more important to me whether or not I can find a swap that matches my desired destinations and dates than whether people bother to respond when my proposal is not a fit, I do agree that response rates are probably indicative of how active people are on a site. And I definitely appreciate that people take the time to tell me a swap isn’t possible.
No home exchange site that I’m aware of publishes response rates overall for their membership, so I decided to do a calculation of these rates based on my experience on the four sites I use actively.
Home Exchange Sites Response Rates
| Site Name | # Requests Sent | # No response | % No response | # Requests received |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Intervac | 19 | 5 | 26.32% | 36 |
| HomeExchange | 61 | 24 | 39.34% | 63 |
| LoveHomeSwap | 65 | 38 | 58.46% | 35 |
| GuesttoGuest | 55 | 20 | 36.36% | 13 |
(if anyone wants to contribute to this table based on your experience, let me know and I’ll send you a form to fill out for sites you use)
A few notes about this table: I realize that these numbers are going to be skewed by where I live and where I want to go, but nonetheless they are interesting to me and I think they are likely indicative of other people’s experiences. I’ll also mention that only GuesttoGuest organizes the email on their site to make calculation of these statistics easy, the others have multiple mailboxes and duplicate storage, and possibly in a few cases permanent deletion of messages that could throw these rates off a bit. I’ve been a member of HomeExchange, Intervac and LoveHomeSwap for the same amount of time, while I’m newer to GuesttoGuest. Lastly, and probably most important, I’ve actually arranged swaps on all these sites except Intervac. By the end of the year it looks like I will have used GuesttoGuest for the most swaps.
(To see my reviews of the above four sites, you can use these links: LoveHomeSwap, HomeExchange, Intervac, GuesttoGuest)
Other Solutions to the Response Rate Challenge
I’m not really sure why sites don’t publish response rates. It possible they fear this could be a competitive disadvantage if it comes out low, or they just fear that people considering joining their site will misinterpret the data. However, there are some other approaches to addressing the same question.
Some sites, like GuesttoGuest, make public a person’s response rate so that you can choose who to contact based on this information. I find this helpful in deciding who to contact first. Someone with a 5% response rate is unlikely to get a request from me (unless I can’t find a swap from those who appear more active), even though it’s possible that person actually is very active and just doesn’t bother to respond when they can’t accept a proposal.
Other sites, like LoveHomeSwap, claim to prioritize listings based on response rates (“Respond Now. Improve your search ranking: We prioritise rapid responders in the search results as it helps keep a happy community”), but they do not post response rates, so it’s not possible to see exactly what impact my 100% response rate is having.
Some, such as LoveHomeSwap and GuesttoGuest, also show when someone last logged in, which is another good indication of their level of activity.
In an attempt to facilitate greater activity and responses, I’ve noticed a trend in the email notifications I get from home exchange sites trying to make it easier to respond to swap requests directly from the notification in your personal email inbox. I believe that HomeExchange and LoveHomeSwap have made changes in this area in the past year. But in doing this they’ve made it more difficult to add a personal note. As someone who always responds to all request, this is probably leading to less personalization of my responses.
Conclusions
In the end, I’m going to judge a home exchange site based on whether or not I am able to set up swaps, either through my searches or through requests I receive from other people. And looking at this table I’m impressed with the courtesy of the Intervac members, but I know that when my membership comes up I’m unlikely to renew since I’m not finding many places of interest on there, and this feeling seem to be mutual based on the low number of requests coming in to me.
With that said, I’ve had a few folks reject my swap request but in their rejection they’ve offer to show me around their city when I’m there. I think this is an very kind and generous offer, and in turn I’ve started doing this for people sending me requests when it works with my schedule. I think it’s a great way to build a home exchange community and get a local’s look at a city. So for those participating in home exchange websites I’d suggest always responding, if only to use the reject button to decline proposed swaps. But also consider hosting people as tour guides, even something as simple as just taking them out for a drink to a fun local bar, if they are coming to your city while you’ll be around.