This past weekend I went and saw, The Holiday. The basis of the movie is two women with relationship problems who exchange homes to get away for the holidays. Overall the movie was good, but can lead to misconceptions about home exchanging.
The first error was that the listing appears to have been an open listing with contact info available to anyone. This is not the case with most home exchange services. Even if it is a free listing, you still need to sign up as a member, listing your home and contact info, before a service will give you access to another member's information.
I think I would have to say that 99.99% of the exchanges that come about are not arranged in five minutes via an online chat service. Generally, you are in contact with your exchangers 3 to 6 months out and many people like to have their exchange arranged a year in advance. Most exchanges seem to require 20 to 40 requests, before you find someone in the area and during the times that you want to exchange.
Once an exchange is arranged, you generally exchange many details on how to get to the home or find the car at the airport, if you are exchanging automobiles. It is also strongly suggested that you develop a book that includes information on all your houses systems (water cutoff, circuit breakers, gas shutoffs) and contact info for any of the repair services you may use. Also, include the location of shopping stores for groceries, etc, and include any of your favorite places.
Our last exchange we overlapped on both ends of the trip. We flew to Ireland and rented a car driving down to Dungarvan to meet the lady who would be staying in our home. She went through her home and explained some of the differences, i.e. what switch to hit if you want hot water in the shower and the master electrical switch for all the kitchen appliances. We then shared information on our house and reviewed maps we brought along, gave her the airport parking ticket and explained where the car was. The next day she headed off to Dublin to stay with family for a day and flew to Denver. We enjoyed our stay for the next two weeks and then headed home. Our exchange partner picked us up at the airport and then we got to show her some of our favorite spots in the Rocky Mountains for the next two days before I took her to the airport.
One of the things in the movie that some people may think is far fetched, is the discrepancy in the home sizes. One a small English cottage the other a sprawling Los Angeles home on Sunset Blvd. The size of homes is generally not considered in an exchange, other than if it meets your needs for number of bedrooms. You may very well find someone with a 5000+ sq ft home who is willing to exchange for a 800 sq ft apartment in a city. It all depends on location.
Of the two ladies, I think that Iris is the more normal home exchanger. When you exchange you usually get to know the neighbors more than your exchange partner. That is one of the reasons it was nice to overlap, it gave us a chance to know who we were exchanging with.
If you want to see the movie because it involves home exchanging and you want to see what that is like, don't bother. The bulk of the movie is relationship based. Two girls in bad relationships who get away, via a home exchange, and find true love.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment