Arthur's Blog: Home Exchanges Can be Arranged for as Little as a 3-Day Weekend or as Long as Many Months

Ed Kushins, the founder and president of HomeExchange.com, passed through New York City this week and agreed to be interviewed by me at the studios of radio station W.O.R. The recording of that talk will appear on this Sunday's show, and contains two new aspect of home exchanging (which can also be apartment exchanging) of which I was earlier unaware.
According to Kushins, a tangible percentage of all exchanges are for periods as short as a three-day weekend, a fact that startled me. Persons living in Boston may wish to enjoy a long weekend of theatre-going in New York City, and thus arrange an exchange with New York residents who wish to go sightseeing in Boston. By exchanging, the Bostonians save as much as the $1,200 that a three-night hotel stay would have cost them in Manhattan. The New Yorkers save almost as much in Boston.
This now-obvious use of home exchanging was something I had never before considered, and it now seems quite logical. Short-term exchanges take place between residents of Los Angeles and San Francisco, or between residents of Washington, D.C. and towns in North Carolina, and they can be arranged in an hour-or-so spent at their computers by persons who belong to the various home exchange clubs like HomeExchange.com.
Kushins himself decided to arrange an imminent home exchange in New York, and sat down to do so in late evening on the Monday night of his recent arrival. By 1 a.m., he had two offers of a home exchange.
Other members, according to him, arrange "sequential" home exchanges on around-the-world trips, something of which I again had never heard. They first make the air reservations for a series of one-week or two-week stays in the cities along an around-the-world itinerary, and then pick up a home or apartment residence in each of those cities. Since they will then be away from their own homes for a fairly long and continuous stretch of time, they are able to offer the exchangers corresponding stays in their own home or apartment.
I concluded the interview by asking Kushins whether people who lived in small and totally unknown towns could arrange home exchanges, and he responded by pointing out that such would-be exchangers are able to post lengthy descriptions of the towns in which they live, thus overcoming the lack of knowledge that others may have. He told of a resident of Modesto, California -- certainly not a household word to persons elsewhere in the world -- who was recently deluged with requests for an exchange after he had posted on www.homeexchange.com a colorful and complete description, accompanied by several photographs, of his own beloved Modesto.
I have gone on at such length about home exchanging only because of my own firm belief that this is one of the most intelligent and rewarding methods of travel -- and something most would-be travelers may want to consider. You not only eliminate the costs of lodgings by arranging a home exchange, but you proceed to live like a resident in the places to which you travel, a profound reward that expands your consciousness. You also make use of a valuable asset, your own home or apartment, rather than leaving it unused during the period of your trip.