European Home Exchange

That's almost like asking someone to choose a city in the United States that would be a good place to stay, as home base, etc.
Could you at least narrow the request down to a country or two?

and when? This year or next? Summer or winter?

What languages do you speak?

Much depends on where your home is located, as well. Are you located somewhere that would attract a possible home exchange?

Yes, looking at summer 2015. Should have no trouble attracting a nice exchange. We've been approached by many European families on our exchange site. We know we want to spend some time in Tuscany on this trip. Just looking for ideas on what else we might include.

are you open to a couple or so nights away from your home base to see things further afield or do you hope to return each day to your home exchange?

We are absolutely open to nights away. Having the home exchange will hopefully help us keep costs down, but we don't want it to limit what we can see.

I don't believe much in the efficiency of using any one location as a long-term home base because transportation to neighboring areas may take longer than you expected and there's a lot of backtracking. Get an overview of train travel time between big cities on Rick's Train Time & Cost Map (first one on the list). You can fly fairly cheaply to some further destinations, if you plan to spend a few days there; see www.skyscanner.com.

Three weeks in one country or more narrow region is more enjoyable if you are willing to make that the focus and not try to see "as many countries as we can." Some people could spend three weeks around Provence and the French Riviera, for instance, with a car for at least some of the inland excursions. There's lots to see around Tuscany and Umbria, too, again with a car for most of it, but travel from, say, Siena to Venice takes 4 hours each way by train.

I would disagree about not wanting to stay in one place for a long period of time. We've done numerous home exchanges in Europe in London, Switzerland, and France (both Paris and a small town in the south called Pezenas). The shortest exchange we did was 3 weeks and the longest was 9 weeks. We have found on all of our exchanges that the longer we stay in any one place, the more we find to do. We get to know people and they share about the local spots to eat, the hidden places to visit, and things that people do just for fun around the area. I wouldn't go to too rural of an area but Europe is so interesting that if you are near a city or an area of natural beauty, you won't run out of things to do. You also want to get the experience of living in a culture and it takes time to really get to know the nuances of the reality of a place.
When we took our son, one of the things we did was enroll him in a summer camp in the small town in France we stayed in. He had a great time, despite the language barrier, and we got to know people that way.

Great idea! That's the kind of trip I'm hoping for. Where we're not rushed and can get to know the locals.

We've done 6 home exchanges. The worst was good; the best, excellent. We've usually spent part of the time away from the home. E.g., we had 4 weeks in Copenhagen, but we did a couple of overnighters in other parts of Denmark and multi-day trips to Sweden and Norway during that period. Based on our experiences, I would say don't pin your hopes on Italy. The Italians we've made contact with seem to really want to rent out their vacation homes. After dealing with muliple variations of "so sorry but my mother (father, grandma . . ) has fallen ill, and I can't do an exchange. However, I have a lovely 2nd home . . ., " we gave up. Maybe your location will be more appealing; but ours (SF Bay Area) isn't bad. While not critical, if you can hook up with a family with the same age kids, it might make for a better experience, just because there will be a certain amount of stuff around for their amusement. At this stage, my only other bit of advice is scope out the locations VERY carefully. The worst, referred to above, was a mile from the center of a village, a steeply uphill mile. Additionally, said village might be the only one in France that doesn't have a boulangerie, not to mention a decent restaurant. It wasn't a disaster, there was a boulangerie in a village 5 minutes up the road and plenty of restaurants in the surrounding towns. However, if I had understood more about the details of the location, I might not have accepted the offer. We wound up doing a lot more driving than I would have liked. As your plans take shape, I'd be happy to answer further questions.

I'm listening intently...Anita and Rosalyn, if you don't mind my asking, are you using homeexchange.com, or another? I find the idea fascinating, and we live in an area that would be popular for visitors too.

We have used homeexchange.com, homelink.org, and intervac.com. They all operate in a similar fashion. You pay a nominal fee, $100/year is what I remember, to have your home listed. Then it's up to you to find an exchange and hammer out the details. I think I remember that one of them offers an insurance option against cancellations. Some, maybe all, will email you notification as new listings appear for your stated destinations. My strategy has been to browse the listings (all three allow this without joining; you just can't access the contact info), and join the one that seems to have the most opportunities in our target area. There seem to be some national biases, e.g., one site having more listings in France and another in Germany, etc. The other thing we noticed is that, unsurprisingly, there is usually a lull in new listings around December, then a spurt after the beginning of the year. The only reason this can be a problem is if you get a less than perfect offer early on. Then you have to decide whether to accept it or wait to see if something better appears. I think it's good to be very proactive, and to go after appealing listings as soon as they appear. The sites have tried to make it super easy for people to turn down offers, but you still get non-responders.

Hi Dave,
We always have used homeexchange.com...in fact I've been working with them for the last 6 months as an "ambassador", attending speaking engagements with them to talk about our family's home exchange experiences. We have had nothing but GREAT experiences with home exchange and have completed 9 of them. Thailand, Quebec, Virginia, Mammoth Lakes, twice to France, London, Switzerland, and St. Maarten in the Caribbean. When you get an offer you are interested in you should spend a good deal of time communicating with the other family via email or phone to find out expectations about cars, housecleaning, pets, etc., before agreeing to the exchange. There have been several exchanges we have not agreed to because of differences in expectations or other factors that we weren't comfortable with. We also exchange addresses so that we can both look specifically where they house is located and get onto google street view to see what the neighborhood and area look like. Google is your friend...use it to google the area to see what there is to do and also google "images" for a place so you can get an overview of the area.
We are lucky to live in the Los Angeles area so we get many offers from all over the world...in the spring we get three or four offers per day. Depending on the area of the country you are in, you should have no problem finding something that will suit you!
Let me know if you have questions and I'd be happy to share!

Thank you Rosalyn and Anita, that's great info.
Dave