Has anyone had any bad experiences with house exchanges? If so, what happened?

Answer 1

My brother did a condo exchange, his condo in LA for a condo/apartment in Hawaii and it did not go well. The condo he got wasn't as wonderful as it sounded on the Exchange web site; not out and out fraud, just an Exchange broker that knew how to take the pictures at just the right angle so it looked bigger, brighter and newer than it really was. When he got back, he found that the family who he'd exchanged with did some really strange things; his water bill was about 8 times as high as normal (they must have been excited to not be on an island because islands usually have water usage restrictions), half of the plates were missing from the kitchen, the fridge had been unplugged with food still in it (gross after 2 weeks), lots of little weird stuff that didn't add up to huge property damage but was still an annoyance to correct, and money out of his pocket. After hearing his story, I decided I never wanted to do this!