Review date: April 2014
travelhomeexchange.com
Founded in 1997
$49/year, $79/life
Founded by French fans of home exchange, also has an office in Montreal
English, Italian, Spanish and French
6196 listings
Listings by region:
- Africa: 63
- Asia: 15
- Europe: 3993
- North America: 2047
- Oceana: 67
- South America: 11
Most listings are in France and Canada.
Searching: There is a search by map function, which narrows down to display little houses in their locations, clicking on one will give an overview pop up box. Non-map searches start with drop down menus for geography with the option of specifying a general time period (i.e. summer). There are no further filters on searches. There is an option to do a “reverse lookup” on people interested in visiting your country. Most of the geography filters do not go below state/region. In Spain and the U.S., for instance, you can not get to specific city using the drop down menus. This is a pretty limited search functionality compared to what other sites are doing.
Listings: The search results include an overview and description as well as desired destinations, though they are missing some information that would be useful to display like how many people are in the swapping family. The detailed listings are very readable, with a map and good summary information on the property. But they do not tell you how many people are looking for a swap in a way that’s easy to find, making it difficult to eliminate families of a size that won’t fit in your house.
This site offers the following variations on house swapping:
- simultaneous or non-simultaneous house swap – this is the traditional model where two parties swap houses for an agreed upon set of dates. Non-simultaneous works best with second homes, but is also useful for people going on vacation and leaving their home empty. In this case each party picks different dates for the swap.
Site design: The site is fast and easy to use, but runs ads in distracting places. Perhaps something that goes away once you pay for a membership.
Additional features: This site will translate your ad into French for free, so if you are keen on swapping to France this might be a good one for you. Lifetime members get a year free membership on homeexchange.com, suggesting these sites are somehow affiliated. If you are considering joining homeexchange.com, it’s a good deal to do the lifetime membership on this site instead and get the homeexchange year for free.