"Travellers never think that they are the foreigners." Mason Cooley

We arranged a house exchange for a week with an American family in California near Yosemite. This really paid off as we had a wonderful home for a week in a beautiful area. It cost us nothing (saving around £450 or so) and gave us a real opportunity to see an area of the states that we wouldn’t have chosen to visit in the normal course of events.
It was well worth it.

How I did it:

I signed up with a company called Homeexchange.com about 10 months before we left and started to get in touch with loads of people. I found that, as a rule, very few replied to queries for home exchange. In fact based on 100 queries around 55 received no reply, 35 were polite negatives, 5 were explored further and just one or two evolved into something.

Home exchange on the move:

I found it extremely difficult to pinpoint when I would be in a certain area and was often loath to commit myself to being in one spot for a week or so when I had no idea what the area had to offer.
The idea was great in principle but the thought of arriving in New Zealand and finding out about a wonderful festival/adventure here and being tied to a home exchange there… In the end the American exchange was the only one that I followed up as I knew my exact dates and was comfortable about being tied to that period.

The other problem about the home exchange for the period I wanted to do it was that I was leaving in the middle of my winter heading to their summer. No one in their right minds wanted to spend the worst months of the year in England while I enjoyed the best months there!

One way of dealing with this is second home exchanges where you do a non simultaneous exchange and simply make yourself scarce for the period that they want to use your home.