Send Enticing Home Swap Offers: ... and a Wonderful Exchange Offer in Wales

'Surrounded by castles, places of interest, history, 2 1/2 hours to London, 1 1/2 hours to beautiful Pembrokeshire National Park beaches, same distance to ferry to Ireland, 1 hour to beautiful Brecon Beacon National Park, 20 minutes to main motorway to reach almost all places in UK .... our home is early Edwardian, warm, elegant, with garden laid mainly to flowerbeds and flowers and fruit trees. We are a non smoking family, with car to exchange. Happy to give references of home owners we have exchanged with as we have stayed friends with all our exchangees.

Our location is semi rural, plenty of green, mountains and woodland, and many small villages, and our nearest town is 10 minutes away. Our nearest city is beautiful Cardiff [our capital, with its beautiful castle, great shopping and theaters] 20 minutes away.'

Now that's a great description that should attract many people to want to look further at Sheila's attractive home exchange offer in rural Gwent! Read the full description and see all of the photos for her listing, HE14267.

However, Sheila, in common with a couple of other Home Base Holidays members recently, reported disappointment at not receiving replies from all the members she had contacted with her exchange offer - not even the courtesy of a 'thanks, but no thanks'. As Sheila had supplied a list of several members who had not responded at all, this did seem odd. We would expect that a few messages could get lost amongst a lot of junk messages in members' mailboxes, or undelivered because of a change of address. There will also be those who don't check messages often or who intended to reply but forgot; but, if hardly anyone replies to an exchange offer, you do wonder if there might be another reason for this. Sheila kindly sent a sample of the exchange offer message she sends, as follows:

'hi , we are looking for an exchange in august for 3 weeks, but first let me introduce myself, my name is sheila i am 56 and a homemaker, my husband is wayne 58 and he is a company director, my son is andrew who works for the waterboard he is 35 and his wife is alison 40 who works in the local school then there is liam 8 years old, we are a family of non smokers , who would care for your home as we do ours, we can offer you references if you would liketo see them from past exchangees, we stay in contact with our exchangees and have become firm friends, please check our listing he 14267, and let us know what you think , thank you sheila'

The information that Sheila has given is very good as it's brief but gives the dates she can exchange and introduces her family. As Sheila is an experienced exchanger, able to provide references from previous exchanges, this is also excellent and should be encouraging for anyone interested in her offer. It would be useful to add that she would be pleased to answer any questions too. The problem would seem to be though that there's no actual information on her home or location. As members must access the Home Base Holidays website and log on to their member areas in order to see Sheila's full listing (the User ID should be given as HE14267, the way it must be entered), a recipient can't tell from reading the message if her exchange offer might be of interest; many busy members probably won't make the effort to log on to find out.

Another point is that it could seem, if you received Sheila's message, that you may be one of many other members who did so and that she may not be specifically interested in your home. Although it takes a little longer, it is always much better to personalise messages - all this means is addressing each member by name and starting with a sentence or two on why you would particularly like to exchange with them (i.e. what you find attractive about their home and location). You can prepare your standard information to copy and paste into all your offer messages but then personalise each one a little before sending.

For further ideas see a couple of articles on exchange offer messages in past issues of Home Swappers Newsletter:

Keep it Personal: Make Your Exchange Offer Stand Out and Get Responses to Exchange Offers: Personalise Messages

Sheila has a lovely exchange offer in Wales and a very good description in her listing. Now she needs to entice those she contacts to want to check out her offer further. Sheila wrote:

'i try to keep the messages short and to the point, because i used to write a long cheery letter telling all the people who i wrote to all about us and our home, and one reply was "blah blah not interested blah blah". thats exactly what they wrote, so i now cut it to the chase.'

It is really too bad that one very rude person (not a Home Base Holidays member thank goodness!) has discouraged Sheila from sending more informative exchange offer messages. Of course such messages shouldn't be overly long (or give minute details about your family!) Their purpose is only to provide enough information to encourage recipients to want to find out more and, hopefully, pursue the offer if it fits their plans.

End your messages with something like: 'I look forward to hearing from you shortly. Please reply even if you can't consider our offer at this time.' Re-contact the member if you haven't heard back within a week or two but, if they still don't respond, accept that they are unlikely to be interested. Keep checking the new listings and don't get discouraged from contacting more members. Sometimes it does take several weeks (even months) to find an exchange, however attractive your own offer is.

Comments

[Ian Brown]

We are two homesick Brits with two well house trained boys ages 10 and 11. We have a lovely house in Sydney overlooking the National Park. It sleeps 5 and there is the use of a car. Our home in central London is currently rented out so we would like to do a swap

May and September.

Please take a look

[Lois]

John,

Your home sounds great and, if you are hoping to swap with a member in the UK, you should find much interest in your exchange offer in South Africa. But first you need to join Home Base Holidays in order to access members' contact details (click the link in my name below).

Home sitting is another option available (not as common as home exchange but you can check for possible home sitting opportunities in the UK on the website before joining and can, of course, include the option, housesitting offered, in your own listing). Please get in touch if you have any questions.

[JOHN VOS]

We live on the absolutely magnificent South Coast of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa - Southport in fact (112km south of Durban).
Retired couple (61 and 62) living in 3 bedrooms, and 1.5 bathrooms, with Satellite TV, 2 cars in 1 garage (including M/B C180 Kompressor and LDV great for fishing), computer, email, etc.
Maid once per week, or more if required!
Would love to sit anywhere in the UK for 6 months as an adventure.

[Libbie]

I'm not currently a member but I would like to make another small point about exchange offer messages. I agree that it is much nicer to receive a message that is addressed to you, and also mentions your home and why the person is interested in exchanging with you, than an impersonal message. And, of course, you do need to 'sell' your exchange offer by giving some information about your home and area.

What I think is also very important though is the presentation of the message. If it is full of spelling mistakes or it is hard to read because it isn't divided into sentences (full stops, sentences beginning with a capital letter), my first impression would be that the person can't be bothered and this would put me off paying much attention to the offer. Maybe that's just me being fussy! However, if you know your spelling or grammer might not be too great, it would seem worth the effort to get someone else to check over your copy (at least the part that will be copied in all your exchange offer messages) before sending your messages.