Spring into Summer!
Nicole Frank is one of the leading experts of the home exchange community. Nicole has been an avid home exchanger since childhood and has completed dozens exchanges around the world with her family. Nicole’s "Key to Home Exchange" appears weekly on RoofSwap.com with do’s and don’t regarding house swapping and tips and advice on a wide array of travel topics. Have a question for Nicole or want to share some insight of your own? Visit our Member Forum section and post your comments and questions.
Dear RoofSwappers,
From Maine to Florida, most of the East Coast of America has had to deal with more snow in the past two weeks than in the previous two years combined. Still, spring is coming, along with lots of exchange offers. When the warm weather comes, my family will be heading to our country house. I can't wait to lie in the hammock with a cold beverage, take a swim to cool off, and then grill some hot dogs. That's just how we spend the summer in upstate New York, rural Pennsylvania, the North Carolina foothills, or the New England shore. Don't ask me exactly where my summer home is located, because I don't know yet. I'm still waiting to hear from whichever home exchanger owns it!
Now is the best time to try to snag your perfect summer home swap. March is close enough to the summer that exchangers are ready to commit to vacation plans. And with five or 6 months before peak travel season it's not too late to line up a great home swap vacation for this July or August. Airfares are still reasonable this long before a summer travel date. But don't wait too long to start communicating with other RoofSwap members, or everyone will have a great summer vacation swap lined up already.
LONG TERM SUMMER SWAPS
A long term home swap is a month or two in the same home. Summer is a perfect time for a long-term or short-term exchange. If you have ever spent a summer in Paris, it might seem to you that everyone in the nation of France is on the move for the entire month of August. I have had several offers from French exchangers just this week. It is common in many European countries to travel for a month or longer in the summer. People in other countries who have children may have less vacation time, but be equally tied to taking time off during July or August due to school schedules. That means August is perhaps the best month of the year to find a mutually-agreeable swap period. And March may be the perfect time to hunt for your August exchange home.
Along with Europeans, Australians often ask for home swaps that are one or 2 months long. If you are one of the lucky citizens of a nation that guarantees four weeks or more of paid annual leave, don't rub it in when contacting vacation-poor Americans. It's better to write to several swappers with the flexible offer of "ten days or more, up to four weeks" instead of expecting a family to have as much vacation time as you, or enough interest in your hometown to spend a month there. When you get a positive offer for a shorter mutual exchange, you may be able to stitch it together with one or two other consecutive swap arrangements with different families.
Summer will be here before you know it! Get ready to RoofSwap your way to your perfect summer home exchange.
Happy RoofSwapping,
Nicole I. Frank,
Your Key to Home Exchange
