If you want to make home exchange a central part of your life style it makes sense to have a home in a location lots of people want to visit. Home exchange clubs are reticent to say exactly where that is because they want people from all regions to become paying club members.
The only concrete advice I have found from swap club owners is that Italy and major cities like New York and San Francisco are always popular. So, if you have an extra million or two sitting around, go out and buy that villa or big city apartment. If you want more options, read on.
Demographic research on home exchangers shows that we tend to be older, richer and generally more sophisticated than average. Still, people are people. And most people tend to visit just a few main tourist destinations. Even if home exchangers are less likely to pick mainstream vacation spots, there are so many people traveling to those areas that even a tiny fraction of them investigating home exchange means a flood of offers for you.
I can vouch for this myself. I live in the world's most popular tourism destination, Manhattan, New York. I have active listings with two home exchange clubs. Even though I note in several places in each listing that I am not interested in any exchanges to Europe or Australia I still receive an average of one new swap offer per day from each club. If you live in Manhattan you can travel anywhere you want via home exchange. The drawback is that apartments in my neighborhood sell for an average of one and a half million dollars.
You can buy a highly desirable exchange home for a tenth of that. Just focus on the most popular tourist destinations.
Here are the most visited areas according to a top personal finance magazine and a major travel company.
BIG CITIES
Worldwide, people like to visit major urban areas for their high concentration of attractions, great restaurants and cultural opportunities. The most-visited international city in the world is New York City, followed by San Francisco, Tokyo, Paris, Beijing, Hong Kong, Los Angeles, Copenhagen, San Diego, Rome, Sydney, Saint Petersburg (Russia), Las Vegas, Chicago, Washington, DC and Atlanta.
Of course New York City,Tokyo and Hong Kong are prohibitively expensive for almost everyone. But Las Vegas, Chicago and Atlanta are bargains. Even Los Angeles and Washington, DC have relatively inexpensive areas. A home base or pied a terre in any of these cities will net more home exchange offers than anyone could possibly use.
Big cities are certainly not the only option for a popular home exchange location. We will look at other places where the home exchange real estate dollar goes especially far. Stay tuned.
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