When we go on home exchange we enjoy living someone else's life for a few days or a few weeks. The swap we have set up for this coming holiday weekend is very different from our daily lifestyle.
Our exchange partners live in a home that was built before my great-grandparents were born. They have a large yard. The house is about a mile from the business district of a small town. It is close to a big state park with lots of hiking trails and bicycle routes.
It is hard to imagine how the swappers' home could be more different from ours. We live in an apartment in a big city. One thing I really appreciate about home exchange is giving our children the opportunity to see multiple ways to live.
The drawback to the diversity of home exchangers' lifestyles is explaining those differences to swappers who are unfamiliar with our city. I just read an article in the New York Times about couples who are raising children in one-bedroom Manhattan apartments. "Move Up? Move Out? Families Squeeze in" http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/09/garden/09small.html
It seems that the median price for a Manhattan one-bedroom, even in this economy, is
$727,000. The average two-bedroom apartment in Manhattan is 1.5 million dollars. The average size of a Manhattan apartment is 1,220 square feet or 113 square meters. San Francisco and Miami Beach apartments are similarly expensive.
These are all wildly popular home exchange destinations. As someone who lives in a Manhattan three-bedroom I found myself swamped with offers when I upgraded from a one-bedroom place in the same building. When seeking an exchange in a place with costly real estate it is a huge mistake to limit your swap offers to homes that are as large as the typical suburban residence.
We discovered this when we tried to find a Key West home exchange. As in a city, high Key West prices mean that the average home is quite a bit smaller than those in other parts of Florida or other areas of the US.
Before making a swap offer, it pays to do some research about the area. NeighborhoodScout.com is a site that provides info about demographic factors in various communities. You can find crime rates, hip or luxurious neighborhoods, composition of a neighborhood by age or other factors, average income of area residents and so on.
There are lots of sites like that for people buying a home. You, the home exchanger, can use the same research tools to find the best swap area for your family's vacation.
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