Home Swapping - a Vacation Lifestyle!
With some misgivings I promised to check out their available options. To my surprise and delight however, I discovered a flourishing market for vacation home exchange.
The concept of home exchange vacations was pioneered by Intervac, a non-profit organisation registered in Sweden. The company has been operating since 1950, and has properties listed in over 50 countries, with in-situ representatives in 25 of them. The company facilitated some 11000 home swaps last year.
There are also 13 smaller specialist companies in this field affiliated under the banner of the International Home Exchange Association. Between them they maintain annual subscribing member lists of properties in a wide range of countries, with the largest numbers in USA, and Europe.
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Agencies typically charge a membership fee, and give their subscribers the choice of an illustrated directory updated and mailed out to their members thrice yearly, (Intervac updates five times a year); an internet option, (password for private access to property listings and details), or a combination of these.
Such a vacation has many obvious advantages over the traditional hotel stay, not the least of which is the considerable saving in hotel bills and car rental fees, (most exchanges include car use). Pets can remain at home, thus cutting out stress for both pet and owner, and expensive boarding fees. And your house will be much safer occupied than left empty during your absence.
As the scope of this article is limited to vacations in the UK and Ireland, I shall concentrate on home exchange listings from these areas. However, with as many as 50 countries to choose from outside your own backyard, you home owners have a world of vacation choice at your computer fingertips.
I list a number of Agency websites in this article. Check them out - they will give you some general information about sample properties available, quite enough to whet your appetite and enable you to decide if this is the your vacation style. Reading through them certainly hooked me!
The profile of the average family subscribing to Intervac or an IHEA agency is likely to be affluent, well educated, car owning, with one or more incomes from professional, executive or family-owned business. This is reflected in the sort of home they list, be it an elegant town house in the centre of London, Edinburgh or Dublin, a romantically restored granite and Delabole slate fisherman's cottage nestling in a picturesque Atlantic washed Cornish cove, or a golf course residence in Ireland's County Donegal.
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