Each contact with a home exchange partner is an opportunity to make sure your home -- your castle -- will be in good hands when the swap occurs. I get a sense of a person's follow- through, consideration and maturity by their communication style.
With last-minute exchange requests, the primary message is "I am spontaneous". Footloose and fancy-free is fun if a pal surprises you with tickets to Vegas but it's not what I'm looking for when I hand someone my house keys.
So what ever agreement you make with the host of your eleventh-hour swap, it is best to keep the changes and demands to a minimum.
We had been contacted by a couple from Canada who wanted to use our place over Thanksgiving -- Canadian Thanksgiving, which occurs in October. With some hesitation I agreed to have them here, reserving our half of the swap for the summer, since fending off frostbite during an Eastern Canadian winter is not my idea of relaxation.
The swap was just a few days away when this newly-married exchange couple asked if they could bring her college-aged son and the son's fiance'. Normally I would not hesitate to have someone bring their teenager. But these were new exchangers. I have had bad luck with first-timers lately. Several families have neglected to clean our home and one packed it to the rafters with unauthorized guests of all ages (we didn't see this for ourselves, but do not underestimate the nosiness of the New York City next-door neighbor).
I had agreed -- against my better judgment -- to have first-time, last-minute swappers here in part because it was a quiet middle-aged couple. Now, randy college students were being added to the mix. That meant that mom and brand-new step-dad had to supervise young people let loose in the big city, in addition to negotiating the home exchange concept.
Still, it is hard to say "no" if someone wants to bring a relative. I warily said that the kids could come.
Then, right before we left on vacation, our exchange partner contacted us again. Could he bring his own college-aged son and the son's girlfriend? They could sleep in the living room, really.
Now I was very uncomfortable. This person, who had never done a home exchange, proposed to bring, and thus supervise, four teenagers. Each adult was related to only one of these four young people. Two of the teens had possible issues with each other due to their respective parents' marriage to each other less than a year ago. Each spouse had several children left to go. Where would this guest list end?
This is how home exchanges get canceled. What do you do if you become uncomfortable with swappers or their escalating requests? I'll tell you what I did next time.
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