Word: swapping
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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After exchanges from Hawaii to England, Tom and Pat Hogan of Carrollton, Texas, are so enamored of the house-swap life that they're shopping for a retirement home in Florida, partly because it is a much sought destination for vacationing Europeans. "That way, we could string together four or five exchanges," Pat says, "and spend time in Europe in the summer...
...couple with the same number of children as yours or a pair of empty nesters, you can pretty much customize your accommodations, arranging everything from a baby's crib to a play group and baby-sitter, from access to a car to the use of a weekend retreat. Your swap family may also be willing to feed your cat and walk your dog. It's helpful to have a friend or neighbor meet your guests and show them the basics: how to use the vcr, where the vacuum cleaner is. You'll want them to do the same on their...
Where can you go on such house-swap tours? Almost anywhere. The larger services offer as many as 11,000 listings, including just about every state in the U.S. and 30 or more countries, from Australia and the Czech Republic to Indonesia and South Africa. If you live in such popular U.S. tourist spots as Los Angeles, New York City or Miami, you may find yourself deluged with fabulous offers: a condo on the beach in Barcelona, a castlelike "cottage" in Burgundy. Sometimes the accommodations are more modest than what you're offering in exchange. But timing and location...
...with a Cincinnati family about nine years ago. Why Cincinnati? No special reason, Olga giggles. They got an offer; it was close; they thought they would try it. Since then, they've taken their two kids to homes in San Diego, Toronto, London--and twice to Orlando, where they swap with Floridians Jan and Stuart Omans...
...exchange system. Several years ago, they wanted to follow a planned visit to their grown children in Boston with a vacation in Vermont. They contacted a Colorado woman, Joanna Lyn Merriman, who had a second home in Vermont. The timing wasn't convenient for Merriman, who banked the swap and eventually transferred her "credit" to her best friend, whose husband was in the last stages of cancer. "They stayed 10 days," Jan Omans recalls, "and after he died, his wife wrote that her husband had wanted us to know what a good feeling he had on that trip. This goes...