We want to be in Florida this January. Who doesn't? It's warm, there are beaches, what's not to like? I went to HomeExchange.com to update my home listing, focusing it on Florida. While on the site, I decided to search for my friends' new home exchange listing. They just decided to try swapping. They have a large, new apartment and they did a good job listing it.
I knew that there were relatively few 3-bedroom homes on offer in Manhattan. So I did a search for all 3-bedroom listings. I was shocked at what I found.
In the past, I have written about the mendacity of certain exchangers. There was the woman who told me she was just a brief drive from Asheville, NC. It turned out the distance was three times as long as she claimed. I also blasted people from the New York City Area who say their homes are "five short miles" from mid-town Manhattan without explaining that those five miles, across a crowded bridge from New Jersey, can easily take two hours to drive.
Until I searched for my friends' home, however, I did not realize the extent of the duplicity. Fully half the listings for homes with three or more bedrooms claimed right in the listing headline to be in "Manhattan" or "New York City" when they were, in fact, in New Jersey, New York suburbs far from Manhattan, distant area of Brooklyn or Staten Island, or dicey, remote Manhattan neighborhoods like East Harlem or Morningside Heights.
We already heard from a French exchanger who was dismayed by the listing that claimed to be on "Manhattan's fourth most expensive avenue". It was really in an awful part of Harlem, under loud elevated train tracks.
It is hard for a family from out of town to protect themselves from dishonest people who hide their neighborhood's drawbacks. But there is a lot you can do to avoid this problem. Tune in next time to find out what that is.
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