It’s hard to believe I just started doing home exchanges a year ago. I figured January was a good time to reflect on my 2014 house swap experience. I’ve done all sorts of exchanges, from the traditional home swap, to the points based stay/hosting, to a hosted stay, and even one non-simultaneous swap. Here’s my list:
1. First home exchange: Monterey for the weekend
2. A few months later we repeated this swap with the same folks for another weekend away
3. One week hosting a couple from Paris while we were away visiting friends (earned points)
4. Long weekend hosting a couple from New Mexico while we were backpacking (non-simultaneous swap we will take advantage of to visit New Mexico some time soon)
5. Simultaneous exchange to Barcelona for 10 days
Plaza de España, Sevilla, Spain
6. Five days hosted in Sevilla by folks we met through home exchange
Cádiz, Spain7. Three days in Cadiz home exchange using points
7. Three days in Cadiz home exchange using points
Alhambra Palace, Granada, Spain
8. Four days in Granada home exchange using points
9. One week in southern California home exchange using points
10. During that same week in SoCal we hosted a different couple in our empty home to earn points
This isn’t really about numbers, but it’s fun to reflect on just how many ways we’ve enjoyed using home exchanges over the past year to facilitate lots of free travel lodging and meet some great new people.
This adds up to 33 nights of lodging for me using house swaps. Since I’m pretty thrifty about hotels I’d estimate that those nights would cost less than $150 per night if I’d stayed in hotels instead. In fact I probably would have averaged $100 per night, especially since the lodging in Spain is quite a bit cheaper than in the U.S. With that assumption, we saved about $3300 on lodging in 2014 by using home exchange.
In reality I’m not likely to have planned all that travel if I had to spend that much money on lodging. Some of the trips still would have happened, but definitely not all of them. In 2014 home exchanges didn’t just save me money, they expanded my travel options and made more trips possible. Thanks to all the great folks with whom we swapped!
This is a really nice post that does a great job of demonstrating the cost savings benefit of home sharing. It looks like you found some great places to stay. Don’t forget one of the key values of home sharing is that you get to experience and travel like a local. Getting priceless insights from the people that live there. At least this is what we hear from our members at growing home sharing site for motorcyclists http://www.MotoStays.com.
Thanks Tad. Agreed that home exchange is about a lot more than saving money. And I’m excited to learn about MotoStays, I’ll be adding it to my spreadsheet of home exchange options.