What is Exchanging?

Home exchanging started sometime back in the 1950's, perhaps sooner depends on who you ask, but it was designed as an inexpensive vacation alternative. At first it was mainly between school teachers who didn't have a lot of money but had summers off, remember this was the 50's prior to the advent of year round schooling.

The basic idea is that you connect with someone in a location you would like to stay. They stay in your home and you stay in theirs. Prior to the advent of email and the internet it could take six months to a year to setup an exchange. And while it doesn't take that long to set one up now, many people already have a long term exchange setup that far in advance. For shorter stays, i.e. a long weekend or a week, things can be setup a bit quicker.

My wife and I have exchanged and when I started taking flying lessons we thought it would be nice to exchange within the aviation community. Not only having a home to stay in but a place to park the airplane. However, we were unable to find such a service and so decided to start one.

There are many home exchange services out there, some of the ones I'm familiar with and have talked with members are:
www.intervac.com -- One of the larger listings
www.homelink.com -- Another biggie
www.homebase-hols.com -- Smaller but more focused on Europe and I like their listing format much better than the other two.
www.homeandhangarexchange.com -- This is our shameless plug for our aviation oriented exchange service.