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Phoenix Home Exchange

Global Home Exchange

Global Home Exchange  is a marketplace for home exchange in Phoenix and across Arizona, vacation rentals, house swaps, holiday homes and vacation rental homes worldwide. Travelers find home exchange or vacation rental accommodations including houses, apartments, flats, town homes, condos, chalets, cabins, beach houses, villas, bed and breakfasts and other vacation accommodation. 

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Phoenix home exchange

Perhaps we are a bit disorganized, but we seem to frequently have these last minute vacation travel ideas.  Two years ago, the day before Christmas I started getting the travel bug.  I wanted to go somewhere over the holidays but wasn't sure where.  Airline seats were booked so we couldn't do air travel, at least not affordably.  December 26,  an exchange offer arrived into my inbox. A home exchange offer to nearby Seattle, for 2 to 4 days starting December 29, three days away.  We took it. Three days later we were sitting in our home exchange partners home planning activities in the Seattle area.  That's last minute!

This year we got better organized and starting planning our trip to visit friends in Phoenix Arizona. They owned a small fifth wheel trailer so we needed to find alternative accommodation.  We started looking for airfare and accommodation January 10 for a trip that would start around February 20.  This was advanced planning for us.

Living in the Pacific northwest, it is more of a challenge attracting vacationers with homes in warm climates to be interested in traveling here in the winter for a home exchange.  I didn't even try to  inquire about an exchange!  My focus was on affordable hotel/motel/vacation rental lodgings.

For 8 days I searched for bargains, $ 185 a night for a hotel room was the bargain.  I also saw prices ranging between $250 and $450 a night for rentals and at resorts plus resort fees, taxes and those extra charges.  For a 7 to 10 day escape to sunshine, this was going to be expensive.

January 18, I started checking the home exchange ads.  Right away there was one that stood out, Fountain Hills Arizona. I wasn't sure were Fountain Hills was located but checked a map - Fountain Hills is 10 minutes drive from Scottsdale in the Phoenix area.  

Before emailing my inquiry, I tried to think on how to make our area more enticing to visit.  That's when advance planning kicked in.  In the summer we were off to a family reunion, leaving our home unoccupied.  So I sent off my home exchange offer, providing the Arizona family with a choice, a straight swap now or we come to their home in February and they return to ours in the summer.

Within a hour of sending our offer we received a reply, asking us a few questions.  The next day, an exchange was arranged.  Our Arizona exchange partners offered us two alternatives, to come to Phoenix in early February when their home was available as they were on holidays to Florida or to come anytime after Feb 20 and they would go visit friends and relatives in their RV.  They wanted to visit the northwest in the summer and were quite flexible in accommodating us.

We had our Phoenix area accommodation, absolutely free.  I could live with this, but could we get decent airfare?  Thursday mornings are a good time to look for airfare bargains.  That is when we stumbled upon a $23 one way airfare from nearby Bellingham Washington to Phoenix Mesa airport.  I grabbed it.  

In a few weeks we were off to Arizona and the sunshine with no cost accommodation and bargain airfare. We left Bellingham in late February, with snow in the forecast and three hours later were greeted by 80 degrees of bright sunshine upon arrival in Phoenix.  We picked up our rental at the Mesa airport complete with GPS.  

During our 7 days in the sunshine we visited the Grand Canyon, saw some spring training MLB baseball and just enjoyed the warmth.  The home was awesome. Spacious, new and quite. We cooked our own meals in our hosts kitchen, used their computer and relaxed on their patio.  Did I say free accommodation?  Wow, what a bargain!

Total cost for a one week vacation including no cost home exchange accommodations, car rental and airfare was less than $800 total for three people or about $260 per person.   This was an affordable holiday.

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