Know Your Trade, the home exchange directory, is proud to announce our December Treasure of the Month, Matching Houses. Matching Houses is a specialty agency, created for home exchangers with disabilities. Boy, do they do a good job! From the registration, which is in a very large font, to the listings themselves, everything is laid out in a fashion that makes it easy for disabled swappers to find a swap home that makes the exchange experience as easy as possible. Homes are classified as to their accessibility with such information as to whether there are steps, handrails, ease of getting to vehicle, width of doorways, etc. The agency is entirely free.

Kudos to Matching Houses for helping make home swapping available to everyone!

Know Your Trade’s August Treasure of the Month is not a home exchange agency. Yet it is just as important in the home exchange community. Home Exchange Travels, a blog written by Nicole Feist has been amusing, educating and enriching home exchangers for over two years. The Feists home exchange on the average of a half dozen times a year and are the veterans of over 40 swaps. This certainly qualifies them as experts in the field! 

Nicole writes on such diverse topics as traveling with kids (she has two little ones), using GPS systems, communicating with exchangers who speak other languages, and tips on sprucing up your listing. In addition she provides her readers with insight into what happens on an actual exchange as she recounts tales of her travels. Nicole does not hesitate to share the occasionally not so glamorous side of home exchange, either. 

Home Exchange Travels is a must read for anyone interested in home exchange. Kudos to Nicole for a priceless resource!    

KYT’s June Treasure of the Month, Exclusive Exchanges, specializes in luxury exchanges. This agency has a lot to recommend it. The design is exquisite and easy to navigate. Exclusive Exchanges offers an hour’s concierge service with paid membership, although since the agency is still young, there is still a free six month trial membership available. We love the fact that almost all of the listings have pictures, which are displayed in an attractive manner.

Exclusive Exchanges has also established Vacations For Veterans, a non-profit organization which seeks to provide recently wounded US veterans with a free week of vacation lodging. All people with vacations homes, whether or not they are members of Exclusive Exchanges are encouraged to donate a week. What a great way to support our troops!

We congratulate Exclusive Exchanges for not only having an outstanding exchange club, but also giving back to the community. It doesn’t get much better than that!

Created by and for academics, SabbaticalHomes.com represents the finest traditions of home exchange agencies. Since 2000 SabbaticalHomes.com has facilitated the trading of residences among teachers, professors, students and their families, worldwide. This agency, well known in the academic community, inspires loyalty from its members through a wonderfully easy to use format, a state of the art website and that personal touch that can only come from an understanding of the needs of their cliental. This is further evidenced by the very impressive number of testimonials from satisfied members. The Ivory Tower is certainly fortunate to have SabbaticalHomes.com as a resource. Our Treasure of the Month of May, SabbaticalHomes.com, is also a highly regarded member of the CHECtravel home exchange agency council.

International Vacation Home Exchange, a CHECtravel member, specializes in luxury home exchanges.  IVHE offers many spectacular high end properties and management takes a more personal approach in facilitating the members’ trades.  This “concierge” service is a rarity in the home exchange world and ideally suited to both first timers and the busy executive. It should also be noted that IVHE is affiliated with Mercy Corps, the international relief and development charity. The agency donates 5% of every membership fee received to this valuable charity. Mercy Corps helps more than 14.4 million people each year recover from disasters, build stronger communities and find their own solutions to poverty. Such a level of generosity, unique in the home exchange world, caps off the myriad features of this spectacular home exchange organization, KYT’s Treasure of the Month of April!

This month Know Your Trade honors the oldest home exchange agency of them all, INTERVAC. Why has INTERVAC been able to survive since 1953 in the ever-changing home exchange market? Simple. Intervac maintains high standards that exemplify good home exchange practices, such as providing a secure means of communication between members so that personal information is not made public and an advanced map based search.

INTERVAC is an international organization with representatives in 35 different countries. Standard methods are used around the world, but country representations are nationally-owned and operated. This accounts for its incredibly diverse membership numbers (over 8000).

INTERVAC has received almost a perfect score in KYT’s rating system and truly deserves to be awarded the Exchange Queen’s Treasure of the Month award.

The Exchange Queen’s busy this month working on another huge project, so I get to choose the Treasure of the Month. International Home Exchange Network (IHEN.com) has long been one of my favorite home exchange agencies. When I first joined IHEN back in the mid nineties, I received dozens of exchange requests from around the world the first year. In ’98 Linda (who runs IHEN) contacted me to see if I was interested in being interviewed by the local NBC affiliate as an example of a seasoned exchanger (by that time I’d made about a dozen trades). My interview was picked up by several other NBC stations and I got my fifteen minutes of fame. The only disappointing part of the whole affair was that they edited out my plug for IHEN. I think it was because I said, “International house exchange network,” and then corrected myself. The camera is so unforgiving; I only hope you have forgiven me, Linda. I really did try to give my favorite home exchange club a big plug!
As you know, KYT doesn’t make specific recommendations, but from years of personal experience I can testify that IHEN has always delivered, never disappointed and well deserves KYT’s January Treasure of the Month award!

The Exchange Queen and Know Your Trade are proud to announce our latest home exchange treasure – HomeForExchange.com. This home exchange club has recently introduced some new features not available anywhere else. The innovative home exchange contract offers members a digitally based agreement. To quote from HomeForExchange, “This contract is not just a plain document, but consist of a set of dynamic pages which you and your exchange partner can use to clearly set down what has been agreed upon. Once all pages have been completed the contract can be printed and digitally signed by both parties.” What a grand idea! In conjunction with this, this club also offers a first of its kind accommodation insurance policy. More details are available on the site.

HomeForExchange also offers a referral policy, a more than ample 16 picture limit and more than 10,000 listings. Our Treasure of the Month for December is truly a gem!