Two decades after Cameron Diaz and Kate Winslet’s characters swapped homes in hit romcom “The Holiday,” house exchanges have truly gone high-end as luxury home owners warm to the concept.
At HomeExchange, a real-life platform the movie’s singletons used for their fictitious swap, luxury homes are the fastest-growing category, said David Bucci, the company’s head. HomeExchange launched Collection, its top-tier of properties, in 2022.
“We’ve had a 200% increase in applications for HomeExchange Collection since launch,” he said. “And Collection members have booked more than double the number of exchanges than other members.”
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Before “The Holiday” helped popularize home exchanges, informal networks drove swaps. HomeExchange itself launched as a print catalog in 1992 before migrating online in 1998. With the halo from the film, HomeExchange flourished, but was missing out on “high-end consumers with really nice properties,” Bucci said. “With Collection, we didn’t just want to create another membership tier. We wanted to create a community.”
With 5,000 homes in its pool, the Collection now has 2,500 members who pay $1,000 annually, Bucci said. More than half the members are in the U.S., with the rest scattered through Canada, Australia and France.
“It has to do with purchasing power,” he said. HomeExchange members can arrange simultaneous swaps with other members; they can also accrue points by hosting without a reciprocal stay. Points can apply to other home swaps.
Along with a minimum home value of $1.5 million, the company set three criteria: sought-after locations, like ski-in-ski-out chalets; amenities, such as a heated pool or tennis courts; exceptional design, “like a luxury treehouse or standout architecture,” Bucci said. “We say no to homes often. We want to avoid the cookie-cutter. Or a property might be a little too eco-friendly. Some homes just have quirks.”
Increasing demand for luxury-home swapping also gave rise to ThirdHome, founded by real estate developer Wade Shealy in 2010. The platform, designed for “luxury vacation homeowners only,” will handle nearly 30,000 swaps this year, Shealy told Mansion Global.
“We’re up close to 40% this year, when hospitality is down,” Shealy said.
“We do well in a slower market, because there’s more availability in vacation homes.”
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Nashville-based ThirdHome counts celebrities like Kenny Loggins as members; “for his honeymoon, he and his wife took their families to a fully staffed house in Punta Mita, Mexico. They enjoyed it so much that they never left the compound,” Shealy said.
ThirdHome’s 30,000 members in 101 countries pay $295 per year for membership. Members trade weeks in their own properties for credits, which the company calls “keys.” Along with the requisite number of keys, ThirdHome charges a flat fee to book a swap, ranging from $495 “at the low end” to $3,500 weekly for a high-end home in its ultraluxury Reserve collection. “That might be a $60 million estate. And when you consider that it could rent for $100,000 on the open market, you realize the value,” Shealy said.
The company only accepts second homes, not primary residences, into its pool.
“I don’t want to go to someone’s house in Dubuque [in Iowa], though I’m sure it’s nice. I want to go where people vacation and explore,” Shealy said “It’s also weird staying in someone’s primary home, with all their stuff. Their Aspen vacation home probably isn’t as cluttered. And with a second home, it doesn’t have to be a direct exchange. The owner doesn’t have to leave when someone comes.”
Among the homes on offer: A 250-acre farm near Buenos Aires with beach and golf club access; a six-bedroom Palm Springs property, with tennis courts and a pool, that belonged to jazz drummer Buddy Rich; and a 20,000-acre reserve near Johannesburg, South Africa, complete with wildlife.
Hospitality companies like Ritz-Carlton are also tapping ThirdHome to help market branded residences, Shealy said. “They’ll use ThirdHome as a benefit to buying. You’re purchasing a $5 million residence? You’ll get a membership in ThirdHome.”
Along with more than 150 brand partnerships, the company works with 1,500 real estate agents who dangle memberships as a carrot for high-end home buyers.
For homeowners who have never swapped, “pain points are the same at the high or low end,” said HomeExchange’s Bucci. “Everyone’s home is their palace, and there is concern around potential damage. We have higher guarantees in Collection, with $2 million in property damage, and a deposit of $2,500, as opposed to the $500 deposit for other HomeExchange properties.”
What to Consider as a Guest or Host
For members new to home exchanges, those “pain points” dissipate after a few swaps, said Jessica Denecour, a former tech executive based in Monterey, California, who joined as a member of HomeExchange in 2013.
“Like many people starting out, we had a few concerns in the beginning. Trust was probably the biggest one—opening our home to people we’d never met felt like a big step,” said Denecour, who has completed more than 200 swaps. “We also wondered about the logistics: Would everything run smoothly? Would our home be treated with care? But after our first few exchanges, those worries quickly faded. We found the HomeExchange community to be incredibly respectful and trustworthy.”
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Denecour shared tips for first-timers. “Watch for potential red flags, such as minimal photos or vague descriptions, rooms in disarray, and poor or missing reviews, especially for members who’ve been on the platform for over a year,” she said. “And beware of requests for money in any form.”
But Shealy, the ThirdHome founder, said his members are more likely to leave gifts than messes.
“My life partner is [retail cookie pioneer] Debbie Fields,” he said. “Whenever we stay in a ThirdHome property, she leaves some cookie dough in the fridge. That’s the kind of members we have.”