The Home Exchanger

Need to Travel at the Last Minute?

Sometimes travel sneaks up on us, or we need to make a trip without much notice. Before making expensive plans to stay in a hotel, check out www.intervac.com for last minute home exchanges. Doing this will save you money, and is bound to be more enjoyable. Click on the Last Minute Listings link at the top of your member's home page and see for yourself that there are many people looking for exchanges in the next couple weeks. It’s never too late to organize an exchange as long as you flexible about destination and time. 

Summer 2008 home exchange arranged

It's not too early to start looking for a home swap for next summer. In fact, some Intervac members are already sending in their home exchange agreement forms for vacations that won't take place for 10 months from now. Today, I received a form from a member that owns a luxury apartment in Los Angeles who arranged a trade with a member in Germany.

Central Park West for Malaga home trade begins this month

A first time Intervac member is set to depart on their first home exchange later this month. The American member is trading their apartment on Central Park West for an apartment in Malaga. The New Yorker is an interior designer while the Spanish swapper is a teacher. Basically, it's a sun for city home swap.

Malaga is an underrated city in Southern Spain overshadowed by Granada, Seville, Marbella and Cordoba. While it doesn't have the history or flash of those cities, it serves as a great base from which to explore Andalucia. It also has a nice Picasso museum and an incredible parador (pictured below) at the top of a hill providing guests with an incredible view of the sea while sipping sangria.

Marin County family secures Nice, France home exchange

Intervac USA receive hundreds of home exchange agreement forms each year. Most members don't file them, but we encourage it because it helps better define the terms of the house swap. Most documents are very simple and serve mainly to provide both parties to the house exchange that there is an objective outsider who is aware of the trade.

In this case, Intervac members in San Rafael, California agreed to trade homes with a French family for three weeks in September. The flat in Nice is less than 2 kilometers from the Mediterranean and looks wonderful from the photo below.

                                             

Share your summer home exchange tale with us

The recent movie, The Holiday, documents a romance between two strangers forged via a home exchange.

But, you don't have to be famous to tell your home swap story. We would encourage you to document your own travels while home swapping this summer. Feel free to e-mail us your real-life tales and photos of your summer swap.

We'll post them to The Home Exchanger blog and include them in the home exchange diary gallery found at the top right of the screen. Currently, we have home exchange diaries from Iceland, New Jersey and Ireland.

More tales are welcome.

Loyal customers return

One of the great things about our business is the loyal customers. We just got a renewal this evening from a member that had last been a member in 1999. They have a different house, live in a different town, but the same area of Washington and they're back with Intervac looking to find a home swap somewhere in the world.

Real-Life Home Exchange Romance!

In the new Cameran Diaz-Jude Law-Kate Winslet-Jack Black movie, The Holiday coming out next month, romances bloom when two strangers swap homes.

This happens in real life too! One of Intervac's members in Paris home swapped with a couple in Colorado. Romance bloomed when he met a friend of theirs in Colorado. Now the  two are dating!

The Denver NBC station did a story about the home swap turned love match yesterday. Click here to see the story, which also gives a good introduction on how to do a vacation home exchange.

Intervac: As Seen on The Today Show!

OK - this is a biggie that has been in the works for a long time. The Today Show profiled two Intervac customers as they did their home exchange!

One family lived in Colorado, and the other in the DC area. After the exchange segment, Al Roker interviewed Travel and Leisure's Heidi Mitchell about how to do a home exchange.

This is a fabulous piece and really shows what it's like to do a home swap.  Check it out here, then click on The Today Show link.

Intervac featured on CBS News in Boston and Austin

Click here to view a good CBS TV story about home exchanging, featuring Intervac members Scott and Laura Haas.  I am also interviewed.

There has been a tremendous amount of media coverage about Intervac and home exchanging this summer. A selection of media coverage includes:  an interview with National Public Radio, two features in the New York Times, a story in the Chicago Tribune and much more. Clearly, home exchanging is catching on in the US like wildfire.  Intervac has been around since 1953, and this level of interest in the US is unprecendented in our history.

Become a member of our large home exchanging community! Click here to join Intervac: until August 30, 2006 you will receive a FREE catalogue from Intevac if you become a web member.* Simply put "The Home Exchanger" to answer the question how did you hear about Intervac.

*While supplies last.

Intervac in the New York Times (twice)

The New York Times has done two articles on Intervac and home exchanging in the past month. The first featured Intervac custome Lori Horne (photo at left), a longtime exchanger. Click here to read about it.

The second quotes me, Jessica Jaffe - I'm the US Representative for Intervac - several times, and tells how home exchanging has become a sub-culture.  Click here to read that story.