HOMES away from Home

If you’re weary of traveling the regular tourist trails, how about giving the house swap game a try, or maybe going for a home rental in some choice corner of the world?

Shucks, you might even end up in a villa on the French Riviera or in one down along Italy’s Amalfi Drive.

The possibilities are endless.

Without argument, one of the thriftiest choices available is the home exchange scheme. Joan and Glenn Ransom (he’s a retired TV producer) traded their seven-room home in Highland Park for a beach house on Maui and loved every minute of it. Because the deal included switching cars, all it cost the Ransoms for their vacation was the air fare.

Another time they exchanged with a Britisher in the south of England. Joan Ransom remembers the holiday as a “marvelous” experience.

The only hitch with swapping homes is finding the deal you feel comfortable with. Sometimes it involves months of frustrating correspondence. Occasionally someone lucks out and makes contact the first time around. But that’s rare.

David Ostroff, the super-swami of the swap dealers, founded his Vacation Exchange Club in 1960 and now he represents 6,000 properties in 40 countries. It’s grown so big in fact that twice a year he publishes a directory listing hundreds of homes, villas and apartments, destinations from Sydney to Sorrento. For $15 he’ll mail you two issues, or for $22.50 Ostroff will list your house in his book.

After this it’s up to the individual parties to pick and choose and then contact one another. Ostroff doesn’t get involved with the home exchange itself.

“We’re really just a publishing company,” says Ostroff.

When schoolteacher Sheila Roen learned about Ostroff’s exchange club, she traded her own digs for a flat in London. And while she enjoyed her holiday immensely, she decided there had to be an easier way of playing the game of switch. This is when she founded Home Exchange International in Woodland Hills, offering to “take the hassle out of swaps.”

As a result, it’s Roen who’s on the firing line. She does the matching, relieving homeowners of all the irritating correspondence.

“We go through the grief for them,” says Roen.

In many cases she checks out the properties personally. A couple of years ago she exchanged her own two-story residence in Woodland Hills for an apartment on the island of Corsica. Roen was joined by her husband, 7-year-old son and her parents.

“We had a simply wonderful time,” she recalls.

The Roens used the Corsican apartment owner’s 1980 Citroen to explore beaches and go sightseeing. There was even a housekeeper who did the washing and ironing and made “heavenly lasagna.”

“It was a wonderful experience,” says Sheila Roen. (The only damage to her own home was a broken blender, which the Corsican family replaced.)

Another time Roen exchanged with a couple in Aix-en-Provence. Using the house for home base, she explored every corner of the French Riviera.

Roen, an ex-Peace Corps volunteer, founded Home Exchange International in 1980. Today she has offices in New York, London, Paris and Milan, and is negotiating for another in Tel Aviv.

After applicants fill out a questionnaire, Roen starts the search. She charges a $30 registration fee and later when the deal is consummated, Roen tacks on a finder’s fee. This figures out to $250/$450, depending on the property.

Because she’s also a travel agent, Roen shifts gears, steering clients to airline bargains.

Sometimes lasting friendships are established among her clients. After swapping homes with a family in France, one Orange County couple exchanged children the following summer. It was a cheap vacation for the youngsters and a pleasant challenge for the parents--on both sides of the pond.

Home swaps involve all levels of society. Everyone recalls the Colorado governor who exchanged the executive mansion in Denver for a sanctuary in San Francisco.

Only recently Sheila Roen arranged for a surgeon living in the South of France to switch with a family in Southern California. Another Southern California family landed a four-bedroom apartment in Paris, along with an ’84 Peugeot.

How would you like to spend a month rent-free somewhere, asks Roen, who represents properties on both coasts of the United States as well as dozens of destinations in Europe.

Still, Ostroff of the Vacation Exchange Club warns that “house swapping is not for everybody.” He says exchanging requires flexibility, a spirit of adventure and a sense of fairness.

“It’s tough to get someone with a villa in Monaco to switch with a family in Indiana,” says Ostroff, “particularly during those humid Midwest summers.”

Other obstacles crop up. Occasionally someone backs out at the last minute, leaving the other family dangling.

Says Ostroff: “It’s a gamble.”

But there are the bonuses: no bellmen to tip, no expensive restaurant tabs. Ostroff knows of one family that has made 60 exchanges since 1962.

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Another home exchange agency declares: “When an empty billfold stands between you and a vacation in the mountains or a cottage at the beach, the answer may lie in a house swap.”

Still, as Ostroff points out, the home exchange game isn’t always the answer. In some cases it’s best to rent, and the possibilities are endless.

If you’ve got bundles of cash, ring up Claire Packman. She represents 2,500 homeowners throughout Europe, Mexico and the Caribbean. Packman, who calls her company At Home Abroad, tells of a magnificent mansion on 100 acres near Florence that sleeps nine and rents for $4,000 a week in summertime or $3,500 in the off-season.

Or there’s the 30,000-acre estate north of London where an earl supplies the works: meals, afternoon tea, spirits and tobacco. For a dozen guests the bill totals up to $900 a night.

Hundreds of Offers

Packman, a pioneer in the home/villa rental game, handles hundreds of juicy offers. There’s the 16th-Century property at Positano, that most romantic of Italy’s villages. Cobbled streets wind uphill from the sea to this villa that clings to its rocky ledge. Here eight sybarites can luxuriate in four separate bedroom suites with terraces that face a 40-foot swimming pool. In summer this private hideaway rents for $17,500 a month, in the off-season for $15,000.

On Amalfi Drive the Baroness von Saurma’s charming farmhouse, which faces Capri, is listed at $3,650 a month in summer and $2,400 during winter. With a swimming pool, gardens and terraces, it sleeps seven guests comfortably, which comes out to a trifle over $500 per person per month in the high season.

Packman’s costliest property is a huge Palladian villa on the beach in Barbados that comes with a staff of six and accommodates 10 persons. The price: $70,000 a month in the high season, $60,000 in summer.

Don’t be discouraged; she lists reasonable properties as well. Packman tells about a two-bedroom bungalow on Montserrat in the Caribbean with a swimming pool and a spectacular view of the sea for $135 a night. Or there’s Lord Litchfield’s deluxe digs near Princess Margaret’s pad on Mustique, which accommodates 10 and is available for as little as $420 a night, along with a staff of four.

In Acapulco a deluxe villa with a swimming pool, cook, maid and houseman is listed for $450 a night. This property accommodates six.

Up the coast in Puerto Vallarta, Packman will put you into a seven-bedroom, seven-bath villa with a swimming pool and tennis court for $800 a night, which figures out to a mite over $100 per couple.

In the Mood to Splurge

If someone is in the mood to splurge on a holiday in Ireland, Michael McGinn will pass the latchkey to Mallow Castle in County Cork for $3,800 a week. The castle accommodates eight guests and is staffed with four maids, a cook, steward, gardener, groundskeeper and gatekeeper.

McGinn, who is a management consultant in Washington, D.C., intended to buy “a wee cottage” in Ireland when he came upon Mallow Castle. It was an opportunity he couldn’t resist. Still, there was a minor hang-up.

“A couple of months after I bought the castle, I called my solicitor and demanded, ‘Where’s the contract? We don’t have anything more than a handshake on this.’ Whereupon the solicitor politely declared, ‘Well, sir, the title search is a bit tricky. You see, the last time the property changed hands was in 1583.’ ”

McGinn, the great-grandson of potato famine refugees, didn’t seem to mind.

“After all,” he sighs, “I’d found my little place in the country.”

McGinn’s castle is slightly over an hour from Shannon Airport and a couple of hours by train from Dublin. But don’t expect to find McGinn there. The last I heard he was back in Washington, slaving to make enough bread to keep up the payments.

Seeking the Special Bargain

If someone is searching for a special bargain, the Australians figure they have the answer: farm vacations. In Victoria, prices range about $36 a day, which includes three meals, riding, fishing and tea. In some cases it’s cheaper than staying at home.

And as the chap on TV tells everyone, they’ll even put an extra shrimp on the barby for you.

For reference:

--Vacation Exchange Club, 12006 111th Ave., Youngtown, Ariz. 85363. Telephone (602) 972-2178.

--Home Exchange International, 22458 Ventura Blvd., Suite E, Woodland Hills, Calif. 91364-1581. Telephone (818) 992-8990.

--Claire Packman, At Home Abroad, 405 East 56th St., New York 10022. Telephone (212) 421-9165.

--Michael McGinn, Mallow Castle, Mallow, County Cork, Ireland.

--Australian Farms, c/o Australia Tourist Commission, 3550 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 1740, Los Angeles 90010-2480. Telephone (213) 380-6060.