The length of exchange is determined by the Members who agree to exchange their properties. The website encourages you to exchange as many times as you like.
There is no limit!
You can choose any combination of Exchange Preference durations;
Members set their preferences in My Account on the My Profile page. You select as many Exchange Preference durations that apply to you.
In general, prepare your Home in the way you would want it prepared for you. You want your Exchange Partners to feel at home, comfortably living there for the term of exchange.
You want to provide them with the necessary room (closet space, drawer space & information for Internet, TV, etc.) in order to enjoy the amenities they enjoy when in their own Home. You will want to have an Exchange Binder informing your Exchange Partner on how to use the entertainment center (TV, Cable, DVD, Stereo, etc.), how to log into your Guest WiFi for Internet access and many other things about your Home while staying there.
As a minimum, you should do a little “Spring” cleaning and organize things that should be organized.
To learn more, go to the Stories page, click on the Serch a Topic link and scroll down to Preparing to read up on Bob's Blog pertaining to the topic.
Vetting a potential exchange partner is the sole responsibility of each Member.
In general, you should have a number of written correspondence, several phone conversations and a few face-to-face conversations via digital app with your potential exchange partners. Common sense applies here.
You will want to know things about the Members you are exchanging with and you will want your potential exchange partners to know similar things about you as well.
If for some reason you are uncomfortable with the Member in the vetting process, there is not obligation on your part to go through with the exchange. You are free to call it off at any time. There is no penalty for aborting a previously arranged exchange.
Members who have agreed to an exchange are absolutely encouraged to Review each other. Under normal circumstances this is done after an exchange has occurred or after a potential exchange has been aborted. The rating feedback is helpful for all Members to assess future exchanges with other Members. By sharing your experience about an exchange and your experience with your exchange partner, you help our exchange community.
To learn more, go to the Bob's Blog page, click on the Serch a Topic link and scroll down to Vetting to read up on Bob's Blog pertaining to the topic.
Members who have completed an exchange are encouraged to review one another. Member reviews are an important way we, as a community, inform each other of our experiences. Of course, reviews should be done in fairness and commensurate with your exchange experience.
In general, only Members who have completed an exchange should be reviewing each other. Once an exchange has been completed (or a previously arranged exchange has been aborted), both Members are encouraged to Review their exchange partner.
To review the Member, Go to the Member's Public Profile page. You can get there by going to the Explore Places to Go page, select the Country, State/Province, City search and click on their property or you can select the Property image from your InMail Messages communication.
On the Member's Public Profile page click on the Review This Member button. A Review This Member pop-up window will appear. Select the appropriate number of stars for each category, make any comments you think will be helpful and click the Submit button.
If you have reviewed your exchange partner, but they have not reviewed you, your review will appear in their My Account/Reviews section under Review Received. They will not be able to see your review of them until they have reviewed you.
In general, reviews are published only when both exchange partners have reviewed each other. If a Member has reviewed you, but you have not exchanged with them, you have the option to delete their review. In such cases, the review is not published and does not affect your review scores.
There may be exceptions where SENIORHOMEXCHANGE.COM (at its sole discretion) may publish a Member’s rating of another Member if the other Member has not responded in a reasonable time period or for other reasons (including but not limited to a violation of the website Terms of Use policy).
Anytime you are editing information or adding information to sections of your My Account, you must click on the Create, Finish, Save, Submit or Update buttons at the bottom of the page (depending upon which page your are editing) in order to save the changes you have made. When you are done making changes, be sure to scoll down the page (if the Finish, Save or Update button) is not already visable and click it. You know your information is saved when you get a green message confirming that your changes have been saved.
When you are uplaoding a Photo Image to your My Profile page, the image does not appear on your page until you have clicked on the Save button.
When you are uplaoding a Photo Image or Video of your property to your Create Manage Properties page, the image does not appear on your page until you have clicked on the Create button.
When you are uplaoding a Photo Image or Video of your property to your Edit Manage Properties page, the image does not appear on your page until you have clicked on the Update button.
If you do not want to save the changes, simply click on any part of the website that takes you to another page and the changes will not be applied. If you have made changes in the My Account section, you will be prompted before you leave the page. If you click Leave Page, your changes will not be saved. If you want your changes saved, click on the Stay On Page button and then click on the Finish, Save or Update button to save your changes.
In short, YES!
SENIORHOMEXCHANGE.COM allows you to list two properties at no additional charge. However, if you have a vacation property and you only want to list it, why not?
We do not require you to list your home property. We only require that one property be listed. You decide which home you want to list if you have that choice.
In fact, some of our Members chose to use their vacation home as leverage to travel elsewhere rather than feeling the need to always go to that home. It is a perfect way to see new places and enjoy new experiences.
Not exactly. We chose SENIORHOMEXCHANGE.COM for our website because we belonged to a website by that name years ago. It was available, we liked the name and we went with it!
SENIORHOMEXCHANGE.COM is ideally designed for people fifty and over. Generally, we are empty nesters, have flexibility and want to travel; whether to visit our kids, other family members, friends or just want to go places now that we can.
Our Members like to maximize their travel budget and recognize staying in someone elses home is an experience that has come of age.
Of course, anyone can Join SENIORHOMEXCHANGE.COM and if they do, we assume they value using their home as a means to travel. As you interact with other Members, you will get to know them. In the end, your decision to exchange with another Member is between the two of you. Once you get to know each other (regardless of age or any other factor) you'll know if they are people you would like to exchange with.
Our commitment is building a community of like-minded people who share the same sense of adventure, desire to travel and want to live it out.
There are three types of Memberships; Free Trial, Six-month and Annual Memberships
When you first join, you automatically join under the Free Trial Membership. We do not ask you to enter your credit card payment information when joining as a Free Trial Member!
When your Free Trial Membership expires, you renew your membership under one of our paid subscriptions.
Six-Month & Annual Memberships allow you continued, full access to the website for the term of the subscription you choose.
The Free Trial Membership is six-months. At the end of your trial period, you renew as a paying member under one of the paid membership plans. Paid Memberships are Six-Months (180-days) or Annual (one year).
You can set up auto-pay when renewing as a paying member.
Joining SENIORHOMEXCHANGE.COM is easy.
There are three things required to take advantage of your Free Trial membership as a full-access member.
This information is incorporated into your Public Profile which other members see when searching to swap their house with you.
Here is the Join process detail.
Click on the Join button or the Membership link at the top of any page.
Either way gets you to the Membership page. As a thank you for considering SENIORHOMEXCHANGE.COM we provide you a Free Trial membership. We do not ask for payment information when joining as a Free Trial member.
Below is the process to start your Free Trial membership.
CONGRATULATIONS! You are a member of SENIORHOMEXCHANGE.COM!
To see what your Public Profile looks like, go to Manage Properties and click the VIEW button.
You can change or update any fields you want for your property by clicking on the EDIT button. Be sure to click either of the UPDATE buttons on the page to save any changes.
You engage other members by searching their properties via the Explore page. Click on EXPLORE in the website header to go to the Explore page.
OR
Use our AI engine Time To Go!
From the My Accounts page, click on the TIME TO GO navigation button on the left. Create up to four date ranges.
Using AI, we compare your date range with other members TIME TO GO date ranges and return those that match. You communicate with them via our InMail Messages to begin exchanging with likeminded members.
On the My Account page under My Profile you can change your password by scrolling down to the CHANGE YOUR PASSWORD section. Complete the information and click on the UPDATE button.
Joining SENIORHOMEXCHANGE.COM is easy.
There are three things required to take advantage of your Free Trial membership as a full-access member.
This information is incorporated into your Public Profile which other members see when searching to swap their house with you.
When joining SENIORHOMEXCHANGE.COM, you will want to make sure you have certain information available before you start.
You will need to have a valid email address, create a password and create a Property Profile.
Required information during the Join process is marked by a Red Asterisk next to the required field.
At any time (during the join process or later), you can populate additional information and upload additional pictures or videos of your property to better inform your potential Exchange Partners.
When making changes within the website, always click the Finish, Save or Update button to save your entries.
Whenever you are at the My Account page of the website, you will notice a % of Profile Completed number below your Photo image to let you know how much of your profile is completed. The more complete your profile, the more likely other Members will engage you in potential exchanges.
Joining SENIORHOMEXCHANGE.COM is easy.
There are three things required to take advantage of your Free Trial membership as a full-access member.
This information is incorporated into your Public Profile which other members see when searching to swap their house with you.
When you first join SENIORHOMEXCHANGE.COM you are required to complete your Personal Profile and create a Property Profile.
From My Account, click on My Profile on the lefthand side of the page. To add an image, click on the Personal Profile Image at the left of the My Account page above My Profile.
The required fields for the My Profile page are as follows.
Note, About Us is not a required field, but it is important to your Public Profile. Populating the About Us field allows you to inform your fellow members who you are, what your interests are and why they would want to exchange their home with you.
Whenever making changes, be sure to click the Save button to save your entries!
To see what your Public Profile looks like, go to Manage Properties and click the VIEW button.
Set up Time To Go date ranges, Explore other member properties and begin communicating with other members via InMail Messages (an in mail service to maintain anonymity).
Joining SENIORHOMEXCHANGE.COM is easy.
There are three things required to take advantage of your Free Trial membership as a full-access member.
This information is incorporated into your Public Profile which other members see when searching to swap their house with you.
You Enter the Member Portal by landing on the Create New Property page.
Once you upload a picture of yourself (or you and your significant other) you will have full access to the website.
CONGRATULATIONS! You are a member of SENIORHOMEXCHANGE.COM!
For Members who have another property, you can create a second property, if you wish to exchange that property, too. There is no additional charge for listing two properties.
Yes, you can! Go to your My Account page, select the appropriate navigation button on the left-hand side of the My Account page, edit the information and make whatever changes you wish. Be sure to click the Finish, Save or Update button. The edited information does not get saved until you click the button.
If you do not want to save your changes, simply leave the edit page without clicking on the Finish, Save or Update button. In that case, the original information remains.
The information available to other members when they search a property or a group of properties is locality information only. This includes the following.
We do not ask for your address. We seek to maintain your annonymity until you have properly vetted your potential exchange partner. Whenever a member searches via the Explore page, the map does not show your exact location but an approximation of where your home is located.
To see what your Public Profile looks like, go to My Account / Manage Properties page. Click on the View button. If you want to make any changes, note what area you want to change and go to the appropriate page from My Account.
You can change your password at any time by going to the My Account/My Profile section when logged in. Scroll down to the Change Your Password. Click the Update button to save your new password.
Your email is tied to your account and log in. You cannot change your email once it is used to create an account.
SENIORHOMEXCHANGE.COM is designed to maximize your abilty to attract potential Exchange Partners. And, we have done so without exposing your personal information!
That is why we provide you (though our Messages section) an ability to communicate with other Members (individually or in groups) via InMail. Only when you have fully vetted a Member on a potential exchange do you want to take your communications outside SENIORHOMEXCHANGE.COM .
It is very important to provide as much information about yourself and your exchange interests to enhance your attraction to other Members as a potential exchange partner. To help you, we have established a % of Profile Completed. You should seek to achieve 100% of Profile Completed.
So, how do we calculate % of Profile Completed?
Here is how you get to 100%.
You achieve 50% for successfully Joining (My Profile required fields & one Manage Properties required fields).
15% is added by uploading a Personal Profile Image. You can upload an image by clicking on the Personal Profile Image at the left of the My Account page.
10% is added by populating the About Us field on the My Profile page.
15% is added by uploading at least one Property Gallery Image from your Manage Properties page. You can upload an image by going to the Manage Properties page, clicking on the Edit button for your property and scroll down to the Gallery Image section and click on the Choose File button. Note, your image will not be shown until you click the Update button.
10% is added by clicking on at least one Exchange Preferences Check Box on the My Profile page. Exchange Preferences indicate the types of exchange timeframe you are willing to make. The more exchange timeframes you select obviously improves your chances of finding exchange partners.
Remember, the more other Members know about you, the more likely you will find others to exchange with.
SENIORHOMEXCHANGE.COM is designed to maximize your abilty to attract potential Exchange Partners. And, we have done so without exposing your personal information! That is why we provide you (though our Messages section) an ability to communicate with other Members (individually or in groups). Only when you have fully vetted a Member on a potential exchange do you want to take your communications outside SENIORHOMEXCHANGE.COM .
Once you have successfully joined as a new Member, you have full access to the website. It is important to populate additional information to complete your profile information.
That includes Member Affiliations and Preferences. From My Account, click on the My Profile button. There are three groups of information available to share with potential Exchange Partners;
Obviously, the more information you make available to prospective exchange partners the better your chance of finding exchanges.
We currently serve the following countries.
If you reside within these countries, you will be able to join and create your property.
Only after you have entered the required infrormation, including creating a legitimate property, are you given full acces to the platform.
We intend to add additional countries as our membership grows. We will update this FAQ as we add countries.
There are two ways to engage other Members in order to find potential exchange partners.
Explore Places-to-Go is the main search engine. You initiate the search based on a set of criteria. You can perform basic searches or create an advanced search by selecting specific attributes.
Time-to-Go is a great feature that uses our proprietary Artificial Intelligence (AI)! You enter a future date range (the beginning date and the end date) of the time you would like to exchange and you select the property you want to exchange. For most, that will be your only property listed.
SENIORHOMEXCHANGE.COM AI then matches all other Member’s date ranges with your date range. Members are listed (in the order of best matches) under your date range. You can have up to four Time-to-Go date ranges!
From Time-to-Go, you can Message one or send one message to several matching members to determine the interest in a future exchange.
When a date range has passed, SENIORHOMEXCHANGE.COM automatically removes the expired date range from your Time-to-Go date ranges. You can add another date range and we then match other Members with the new date range.
You search other Member properties via Explore. You can perform a general search or you can perform an advanced search based on a number of criteria (attributes). A general search includes metropolitan area, region or state (for the US), province (for Canada) or country.
Advanced searches allow you to include or exclude potential Members based on certain attributes; Member Affiliatoins and Special Considerations.
You would select one or more Member Affilitations to narrow the list of members in your Explore search. Member Affiliations are Educators, Law Enforcement and Military. If you have an affiliation with any of these, you will want to click all that apply in your My Profile page. That way, likeminded people who have had a similar affilation or career can find you.
Similarly, Special Considerations are targeted around those who allow pets and those who allow smoking in their home. Again, if you have a strong preference that revolves around either of these Special Considerations, you will want to make sure you click those attributes on your My Profile page.
Members prefer to exchange with other members who are likeminded in terms of career, pet ownership and smoking (or non-smoking). The more information you can provide other members through your My Profile and Property Profile, the better your chance of success in finding compatible exchange partners.
It is very important to complete your profile as much as possible (including Personal Profile, Property Profile, Exchange Preferences and Member Affiliation attributes) to make it easy for other Members to locate you.
SENIORHOMEXCHANGE.COM uses Artificial Inetelligence (AI) technology to search and update all Members Time-to-Go date ranges. It matches other members date ranges compatible to your date ranges and orders them according to best match.
For example, it is February and you know you would like to exchange the second week of August of the same year. You enter the beginning date range, the ending date range for that week and assign your property.
SENIORHOMEXCHANGE.COM AI technology searches all other Members’ date ranges for matches to your date range (the second week of August, in this example). All Member date ranges that most closely match your date range are given a percentage match. A match score of 100% means your date range and the date range of that Member are identical. Member Time-to-Go matches are listed in descending order (highest percentage match to lowest).
Each Member has the opportunity to create up to four separate Time-to-Go date ranges. Then you sit back and let SENIORHOMEXCHANGE.COM AI tecnology find you other members with similar Time-to-Go date ranges. If you have a current Free Trial or Paying Membership, you can view the other Member’s property and public profile and communicate with them via Messages.
When you want to contact a Member (or group of Members) through the Explore PLACES TO GO search or a TIME TO GO date range, you can send those Members an InMail Message.
When you click on the Public Profile Image of a Member, you will go to their Public Profile page. On the Public Profile page you can click on the Send In-Mail Message button.
When you want to send a group message to multiple Members from either the Explore PLACES TO GO or TIME TO GO, you select any number (or all) of the Members from your search result by clicking on the box in the lefthand corner of the Property image. Once selected, you can click on the Send In Mail button to create a group message. A group message window opens. Enter your Subject, Message & click the Send button.
Your message will be sent to all the Members you selected. Your InMail Message includes your Property Image. Everyone receiving your InMail Message can click on your Property Image to view your Public Profile.
Your In-Mail Messages are in the My Account section. Click the Messages button on the lefthand side to see your In-Mail Messages with other members. Note, any messages that you send to a group of members will not appear in your Messages unless (or until) a member responds to your message.
Free Trial and Paying Members will be able to respond right away.
If your membership has expired, you will be prompted to renew to a Six-Month or Annual plan when you log in before you can access to the member portal.
Once you have received a message from another Member who is interested in an exchange through Messages, we recommend you send at least two or three additional InMail Messages specifically to that Member discussing the time (month, season, year, etc.) and duration of your exchange.
Once you have established a good dialog, you will want to communicate directly via your personal email, Facebook account, phone, FaceTime, Skype, Teams, What's App &/or Zoom to continue the dialog.
Remember, SENIORHOMEXCHANGE.COM is an exchange forum. We promote exchanges between members, but it is ultimately your responsibiity to vet your exchange partner. That is why we recommend multiple conversations in multiple ways to get to know each other.
Some Members do, others don’t. It is an individual choice and depends on the circumstances of the two exchanging Members. It can be a highly beneficial option and certainly a cost saving benefit for both exchange Members. Ultimately, it is at the sole discretion and agreement between the exchanging Members.
As a Member, you can always see your Public Profile when you are logged into your account. Go to My Account / Manage Properties. Click on the View icon. It will display your Public Profile. Your Public Profile is what other Members see when they search for you either through Explore or via Time-to-Go date range matches.
However, when you search via Explore you will not see your Public Profile. The website knows you are logged in and assumes you are looking for other Member Profiles to exchange with, not yours.
When non-Members visits the website, they can see a few Member properties on the Explore page. However, if they click on a specific Member Property, they are directed to the Log In page rather than the Member's Public Profile. If they are not currently a Member, they can Click on the Join link or Join icon to become a Member.
To state it another way, no member Public Profile is avilable on the public side of the website. Only members logged into the Member portal have access to and can see other member's Public Profile.
Using our proprietary Artificial Intelligence technology, Time-to-Go is designed to make it easier for Members to connect with one another. AND, the best way to do that is to connect Members based on when you are available to travel &/or when you want to travel.
There are two main ways to utilize Time-to-Go.
Time-to-Go is a service making it easier for you to connect and arrange exchanges with other Members!
When you first join SENIORHOMEXCHANGE.COM you do so with a Free Trial. The term of your Free Trial is determined by the Free Trial term in place at the time you Join.
There are two Paid Plan options; Six-Month (180-days) plan & Annual (one-year) plan. When selecting either Paid Plan, your subscription is renewed starting the end date of your Free Trial, so renewing early will not cut short your Free Trial duration.
As you near the expiration of your Free Trial, you will receive an email inviting you to select a plan.
When selecting either Paid Plan, you are directed to a secure payment page. Payment is by Credit Card or Debit Card. After payment is made, you will go to the My Account page to continue exchanging with other members.
We also recommend you choose Auto Renew when selecting a paid plan so your subscription stays current.
If your subscription has expired, the next time you log into SENIORHOMEXCHANGE.COM you will be sent to the Membership page to renew your subscription. Select the Six-Month (180 day's) or Annual (one year) plan. You will be directed to the payment gateway to complete your purchase.
Once you have renewed your subscription, if you will then have full access to the member portal. None of you information is lost if your subsriction expires.
Other members with a current subscription can see your Public Profile via Explore. If they send you a message via Messages, you will receive an email saying you have a message from another member.