House Swapping—I Don't Know

You may be familiar with the concept of house swapping. If you're not, I'll fill you in. It's when a person trades his/her home for another person's home. People often do it when they're having difficulty selling their home, and it's common that the traders are moving out of state. So, say if you took a job in Richmond, Virginia and had trouble selling your home in Charlotte, you'd look to see if there was a homeowner in Richmond who was looking to sell his home to move to Charlotte. If the property values were similar, you might make an even trade. If not, one party would throw in some cash to make up the difference.

When I first heard of the concept, I thought it was strange. But in this struggling economy in which the housing market is hurting, it not only makes sense but it has become the only option for many people. On Charlotte's Craigslist, there's a housing swap section. You'll find posts that say: "Looking to trade Lake Worth, FL residence" or "Looking to relocate to Charlotte from Tampa." In addition to Craigslist, which some people probably use because it's free, there are dozens of websites devoted to house swapping (for a fee).


But I'll tell you what blows my mind: the fact that people are swapping homes for vacations. In these temporary swaps, you would offer up your home to a person or family for a specified period of time to stay at their place. I could see someone wanting to stay at my house during race week, but they would need to live somewhere like Miami for me to be interested. This is something else that's being done more because of the economy. People looking to save money on vacations by not having to spend on hotels are swapping homes. I imagine they would also save on food since they would have full use of a kitchen as opposed to eating out during the entire trip.

One of the popular websites to do a home exchange, as they're also called, for a vacation is Digsville.com. I don't think I could do this type of swap, though. There are too many crazies in this world. I wouldn't feel comfortable having strangers live in my house for a week. Who knows what they've done while you're gone? Some sicko might even install hidden cameras.