Follow Through On Your Travel Commitments
Dear Key to Home Exchange,
A couple of months ago, before joining RoofSwap, we used a different club to finalize what felt like a great exchange - 3 weeks in a small in-town cottage in coastal Spain next June. Retired couple, car exchange, etc. This is a first exchange for both of us but we've been thorough and thoughtful. We exchanged quite a few emails, coordinated dates carefully and both purchased airline tickets.
I was noodling on the internet and discovered their home is on the market! When I asked I was told not to worry, that they wouldn't be selling for at least a year, which they understood it was a shock but it wasn't something to worry about. But it is a current listing and of course the nature of real estate is that it sits and then suddenly sells. It's a tourist-driven town and I'm sure they feel it won't budge till summer, but we sold our Hilton Head place in September so truly, one never knows.
I've read in your [ HomeExchanger.Blogspot] column about the exchange you cancelled when you discovered the home was for sale. This couple seems more clueless than diabolical - they don't seem to see it as a big deal or misleading. But we are uncomfortable and now thinking they may be flighty in other ways as well. Obviously the correct thing to do was to let us know the situation before we finalized. When we sold our place it was not officially on the market but we never would have finalized to the point of someone buying tickets without mentioning that we might sell, and we immediately contacted the people we WERE talking to and offered up our full-time home as an alternative.
I am asking if you think we should cancel the exchange, or go with our gut and trust that this couple has their heart in the right place and will follow through on their commitment.
Naomi, South Carolina
Hi Naomi,
It's true that I cancelled a swap when I found the home was listed for sale. But among my more than 40 exchange experiences is the time I used a swap home that was actively listed for sale. We made sure to clean the house every day in case a real estate agent dropped in or a possible buyer peeked in the window.
Why did I cancel one exchange because the house was for sale but tolerate the same inconvenience during another swap? The difference is communication. There is nothing more important in home exchange than revealing possibly deal-breaking details to your swap partners. There is no excuse for letting your exchange partners show up at your house to discover, oops, you forgot to mention you are still renovating the kitchen and there is no stove, or gosh, you didn't think it was important to mention Beulah, your pet pot-bellied pig who sleeps in your bed with them and needs slop three times a day. You don't want angry, misled exchangers turning your beloved family pet into bacon or having to bring a hibachi grill into your gutted kitchen.
I completed a swap where the house was for sale because the family told me that in advance. Your French swappers could have done the same thing. They did not, and you cannot trust them.
The Spanish couple had a responsibility to tell you their house was for sale. They acted in bad faith. I think you should trust your gut, and also report them to the swap club. You still have a lot of time to get a different exchange in Spain, or even elsewhere in Europe. If they get a good offer on the house in the half a year before your exchange is scheduled to begin, you will be out of luck.
Spring is house buying season in the US, particularly because people want the house to use all summer. I doubt Europeans have a completely different psychology on this matter.
Happy Home Exchanging!
Nicole Frank, Your Key to Home Exchange
About RoofSwap.com:
RoofSwap.com is one of the leading home exchange websites with over +14,000 listings in 128 countries. Home Exchange is the vacation alternative where two families agree to swap homes for a vacation ("you stay in my house while I stay in yours.")
Roofswap.com provides easy to use, friendly and the most secure home exchange platform in the industry. The founders of the site are avid home exchangers with more than 46 years of house swapping experience. They understand that home swappers want to be part of a large network that allows them diverse travel opportunities, so they combined the power of several sites and developed the most intuitive interface to make house swapping simple, fun and secure.
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