SEPARATING THE TOURISTS FROM THE HOME EXCHANGERS

We are preparing to move to a tiny 1-bedroom apartment just a few blocks from our kids' school.


For 5 years I have offered our family's gigantic, renovated 3-bedroom condo. With the condo's perfect Manhattan location and immense size, I became used to fending off hundreds of swap requests per year from exchangers.


I recently wrote about my concern that no one will want to swap homes with me again now that our home is far more humble. I got lots of thoughtful, supportive messages from successful home exchangers with less-than-spectacular residences.


How could I fall in love with a shoebox-sized apartment that looks like an exhibit room at the NYC Tenement Museum? Probably because I am a home exchanger.


My big, beautiful condo is, in design lingo, a "vanilla box". Built in the 1960's it has low ceilings and no architectural detail. One swapper described the building's architecture as "brutalist" which is kind in the sense that it implies the blueprints are interesting enough to be part of a design movement of any sort.


The condo building could be anywhere. My new, crummy apartment is unmistakably New York. It is an authentic Lower East Side tenement brownstone from the 1800's.


The first moment I set eyes on the layout and high ceilings, wide plank floors and wall of windows I said "I think this is the first place my grandmother's grandmother sewed piecework when she got off the boat from Austria."


I just think non-New Yorkers will focus on the cracks between those ancient floor boards or the fact that the bathtub is the center piece of the kitchen.


Only real home exchangers are going to find quite that much authenticity charming. Here is where we separate the tourists from the home exchangers.