The Home Exchanger

Intervac Mentioned in Barron's

Barron's, the financial publication, recently wrote a story about the best way to find vacation properties.  Here's what they had to say about Intervac:

Intervac ( http://www.intervac-online.com) has been in the business since 1953, and claims 10,000 listings in 50 countries. Independent organizations are in charge of the swap service in each country. Go to http://www.intervacusa.com for regional information and rates in the States, as well as a thorough frequently-asked-question section on the home-exchange process in the U.S. Fees start at $65 a year. For that, you get access to U.S. listings and your personal entries go into the database. You can browse listings while you're deciding whether to join.

Click here to read the whole article.

London Hospitality Exchange - How Much Did We Save?

We had a wonderful time on our hospitality exchange.  I always like to tally up how much we saved on hotels after an exchange.  We stayed in London, one of the most expensive cities in the world, for 6 nights for free. 

An average hotel room in London costs about $150 a night.  So on hotel costs we saved about $900. The room we stayed in had its own ensuite bathroom and was very nice, pretty equivalent to a nice hotel room in a lot of ways.

In addition to the cost savings, it was nice to get to know Between the Commons, an area of London that we knew nothing about. We stayed less than one block off Northcote Rd, which was a vibrant street full of cafes, boutiques and gourmet food stores. Public transportation was very convenient - it took 5 minutes to get to Victoria Station in Central London. And we had lots of fun with our host.  Overall, we felt we were living how other Londoners live.

Intervac Spring Catalogue Sent

One day after we returned from the Intervac annual general meeting in Rhodes, the Intervac spring catalogue arrived in the US from our European printer. We were able to turn them around a few hours after receiving them at our office so all spring catalogue subscribers should receive them by the end of the week.

There are a few extra copies so if any existing subscribers would like to receive the latest catalogue, please let us know at Intervac USA Home Exchange.