[Otter74]

I personally have not, but my partner has used HomeExchange for years and has had good experiences with it. We went to Spain for two weeks earlier this summer and did an apartment swap with a woman who wanted to come to Chicago for two weeks - worked great for both of us, we enjoyed her place a lot, and saved a ton of money. She also used it to spend two weeks in Montreal in the spring. On that platform you can either do a synchronous or asynchronous swap (those are my terms) or use 'points'. I'm not sure what this is like in the very beginning, but since trust and reputation are important, one probably has more opportunities after using it for a few years. The length of time involved is entirely up to the two parties involved in the potential exchange.