Gerri Hayes of Kane'ohe participates in home exchanges — arrangements in which people trade houses with a family somewhere else in the world to give both a place to stay while on vacation. Rebecca Breyer • The Honolulu Advertiser

That's the deal that caught the eye of Kane'ohe resident Gerri Hayes, who has swapped her house with other families to get free stays in Lake Tahoe, Calif., Sydney, Australia, and Rome.

"The cachet of Hawai'i is a big draw. People would love to come here," said Hayes. "I've had some great experiences and I've met some wonderful people."

It's a system called home exchange, and a number of Web sites help you find people who want to trade houses with you during a vacation.

The benefits are free lodging, staying in a fully-stocked home in a residential neighborhood instead of a tourist area and making new friends around the world. Some also exchange cars to cut out the cost of renting a vehicle and offer up use of family bicycles, kayaks or bodyboards, too.

"It can be a very inexpensive vacation," said Hayes, who has been doing home exchanges for about nine years.

Hayes' listing touts her two-bedroom, two-bathroom oceanfront home with a pool and a hot tub, and "hiking, sailing, swimming all minutes away."

In the ad, her "preferred destinations" that she wants to trade for are Italy, Africa and France.

Hayes' listing draws about two or three hits a week "from all over the world," she said. "It's sort of fun."

One of the oldest home exchange networks is Intervac, which was started in 1953 by a group of teachers in Europe looking for "an authentic and affordable way to travel," said Intervac USA Home Exchange co-owner Joshua Jaffe.

Home exchange participants used to be listed only in a book. Now, Intervac and many other home exchange networks have Web sites and often have membership fees for listings. Hayes is a member of the online International Home Exchange Network, whose membership costs about $40 a year but allows anyone to view listings.

Of about 2,000 listings worldwide on the International Home Exchange Network, about 14 are from Hawai'i. On the Intervac Home Exchange site, out of about 10,000 listings about 50 are from Hawai'i.

"Intervac members in Hawai'i can write their own ticket to anywhere in the world," Jaffe said. "There's no other destination anywhere in the world that is more desirable than Hawai'i, so we do everything that we can to get members in Hawai'i," including offering membership discounts. Intervac membership starts at about $65.

The home exchange community includes vacationing families, retirees, couples and parents who want to visit children in college. Many home exchangers are wealthy, said Hayes, who is president and chief executive of a local office furniture business called Office Pavilion.

Looking at the listings of homes, Hayes said "some of them are absolutely fabulous. I mean, truly estates. And some of them are regular houses."

"You don't need to have an elaborate home to participate in home exchange," said Dan Rubin, president of the International Home Exchange Network. "A lot of people that home exchange are retired and have the time and availability."

In general, "it's an upscale crowd," Jaffe said. "These are people that have the money to travel and they've kind of already done the packaged hotel tours. They've done the typical tourist stuff and now they want something a little more real, a little more memorable."

What makes it "more real" is staying closer to where residents live. Jaffe said he and his wife did a home exchange from California to stay at a loft in Tribeca, N.Y., for example. "We were living life like New Yorkers for just a few days," Jaffe said. "It was exciting, as opposed to staying in a hotel room. You kind of get inside someone's life by staying in their house."

It can be a good way to travel with children because "you don't have to deal with the hotel and restaurant," Jaffe said. "You have your own backyard. "

There are variations of home exchanges. One is that people with extra rooms or second or third homes can do non-simultaneous exchanges.

To be sure, a key element to home exchanges is trust and trustworthiness. Many first-time exchangers worry about what could happen to their home, car and valuables with an inconsiderate family.

"You've gotta be pretty trusting. You have to not be too worried about your stuff," Hayes said.

Exchangers say it's important to take reasonable precautions, but say they rarely if ever have bad experiences. Common minor events include broken drinking glasses and less-than-ideal cleanliness.

"Most people are pretty honest," Hayes said. "I've had one or two little things (damaged) and they've either left money or contacted me and said, 'What do you want?' "

Beverly Hoversland, who also lives in Kane'ohe, started doing annual home exchanges in 1998 and said she has no complaints.

"People always ask us how we can leave our home to total strangers," said Hoversland, who owns an architectural consulting practice in Honolulu with her husband. "Nothing has ever happened. The people have always been nice people."

Her first home exchange was with two doctors in Paris. She usually stays for a vacation of between three to six weeks.

"It's nice to just sort of get into the fabric of the community rather than be a tourist in a hotel," Hoversland said. Another benefit is cost. "It would be a pretty outrageous expense spend six weeks in Paris and stay in a hotel, [but] you can do it with a home exchange."

In turn, Hoversland said tourists like to stay at her 3,500-square-foot house on a hillside overlooking Kane'ohe Bay because it's not in Waikiki.