Table of Contents for this Episode
Category: France on a Budget
581 Home Exchange Experience with Liz Van Montfort (Jan 18)
[00:00:15] Introduction and Welcome
Annie Sargent: This is Join Us in France, episode 581, cinq cent quatre-vingt-un.
Annie Sargent: Bonjour, I’m Annie Sargent, and Join Us in France is the podcast where we take a conversational journey through the beauty, culture, and flavors of Franc
[00:00:29] Today on the podcast
Annie Sargent: e.
Annie Sargent: Today, I bring you a conversation with Liz Van Montfort about her home exchange experience in France, how she spent 20 nights in Paris without paying rent.
Annie Sargent: Wow. When we recorded this, I had just listed my own place on home exchange. I’ve since tried it myself, we’ll talk about that in a future detailed episode. In the meantime, you will learn a lot from Liz. We talk about how home exchange really works, why she prefers it to hotels and Airbnb, and what travelers should know before trying this affordable way to stay in France.
Annie Sargent: And by the way, this episode is not sponsored by home exchange.
[00:01:09] Podcast supporters
Annie Sargent: This podcast runs on chocolatine, coffee, and the generosity of listeners like you, whether you book an itinerary consult, take one of my GPS guided tours of Paris on the VoiceMap app, join me on a day trip in my electric car around the Southwest of France, or support the show on Patreon, you keep this whole adventure going and I’m deeply grateful.
Annie Sargent: If you’d like to support the podcast and skip the ads this year, you’ll find the link in the show notes and you’ll find information about all my tours and services at joinusinfrance.com/boutique.
[00:01:44] Magazine segment
Annie Sargent: For the magazine part of the podcast, after my chat with Liz today, I’ll discuss big changes coming to Paris in 2026, and there are a lot of exciting ones.
Annie Sargent: Listen, French is not easy to spell, but English is not either, so we’re even. If you heard about a great place we mentioned on the podcast, but couldn’t write its name, go to the episode notes and edited transcript. Everything is spelled out correctly on joinusinfrance.com/episodes, and it’s also organized by month.
Annie Sargent: Another way to keep up with podcast news is to sign up for the newsletter at joinusinfrance.com/newsletter.
[00:02:35] Home Exchange with Liz van Montford
Annie Sargent: Bonjour, Liz van Montfort, and welcome to Join Us in France.
Liz Van Montfort: Bonjour, Annie.
Annie Sargent: Welcome back, I should say. You were on an episode talking about your six weeks visit through France just a few months ago.
[00:02:50] Home Exchange Experience in France
Annie Sargent: And now we’re going to talk about home exchange, because during that recording you mentioned that you have done home exchange, and this is something I really want to start discussing more, because I think it’s a great way to discover a country. So tell us about your experience.
Liz Van Montfort: So it’s a really great way to travel because you get to stay outside of the city centers, and, you know, even in smaller villages. It seems a bit more personal. Airbnbs are now run like hotels and businesses, and I know there’s a lot of pushback against Airbnb in some of your bigger cities in Europe. So to be able to exchange your home with a like-minded person is not only really good value for money, but it’s just a really nice way to holiday as well.
Annie Sargent: Yes. So have you done it in France? How many times?
Liz Van Montfort: So when we traveled to France for the six weeks in 2023, we had, I think two home exchanges in France. One was just for one night in Dijon, and then the other one was for 20 nights in Paris. We were there for the Rugby World Cup and our tickets were sort of at the business end of the tournament, so we were in France for almost three, sorry, in Paris for almost three weeks.
Liz Van Montfort: And we managed to secure an apartment, a two bedroom apartment in the 17th arrondissement, and it was a secondary residence. So I think some of the secondary residences are also possibly on the Airbnb circuit as well, but there is a limit, from what I understand, in Paris of the nights you can do on a Airbnb schedule.
Annie Sargent: That’s correct. I think it’s 90 days or perhaps hundred and days, I have forgotten but there is a limit, yes.
Liz Van Montfort: Yeah, and I know that there’s a really big pushback because I sort of understand that, you know, homes in these big cities are needed for local residents.
Annie Sargent: Sure.
Liz Van Montfort: We had a two bedroom apartment there, andwe used it as a base for a little bit of exploring around the region as well. But just knowing that we could come and go and, you know, it was kind of like our home away from home.
[00:05:04] Types of exchanges
Annie Sargent: Right, and so you did it with exchanging points? This was not kind of a… they weren’t in your home at the same time.
Liz Van Montfort: No.
[00:05:12] Types of Home Exchanges
Liz Van Montfort: There’s two types of exchanges you can do. You can do a reciprocal exchange where you and me meet through the website. You say you want to come and have a holiday in Christchurch, New Zealand. I’m like, "Yay, I’m going to Toulouse," and I come and stay in your house, and you come and stay in my house. We might let each other use our cars. It’ll be for the same period of time, you’d be here for three weeks, I’d be in your house for three weeks. Sort of nothing changes hands.
Liz Van Montfort: Also, as part of the website, they have a currency sort of called Guest Points. When we stayed in the apartment in Paris, it was on Guest Points because it was a secondary residence, and I can’t remember how many Guest Points it was a night. They all sort of sit around that 150 kind of mark, and we just had accrued enough Guest Points to be able to stay for the whole time in that apartment.
Annie Sargent: Right, and so you were able to stay in Paris for 20 days without paying actual cash.
Liz Van Montfort: That’s right. Which was huge.
Annie Sargent: It’s huge. 20 days in Paris would… I don’t know, for a hotel, you’re looking at 300 a night, even if you don’t go very fancy.
Liz Van Montfort: Yeah. When we first arrived in Paris, we stayed in a hotel, and I think it was about 220 euro.
Annie Sargent: And this was before the Olympics, so this was a few years back.
Liz Van Montfort: Yeah.
Annie Sargent: Prices have gone up significantly since the Olympics.
Liz Van Montfort: Right.
[00:06:42] Benefits of Home Exchange
Liz Van Montfort: We quite like the home exchanges too because it is quite nice just staying in a more comfortable, you know, having an apartment, having a kitchen, having a laundry, living in a neighborhood, supermarkets and coffee shops and laundries and just being able to really live quite locally.
Annie Sargent: Yeah, that’s really nice. How long have you been doing this?
Liz Van Montfort: We probably did our first home exchange about, it would be about 10 years ago, it was a reciprocal exchange with a family in Sydney, Australia. And we went to their house with our kids, and we used their vehicle. They came to our house. They used our vehicle. They fed our chooks. The cat got looked after. All that sort of stuff. I think we did about a week or 10 days, just exchanged, and it was really good, really nice. And we still get Christmas cards from them, which is… It’s quite lovely.
Annie Sargent: Yeah.
Annie Sargent: And so we’ve done, that was our first one, that was quite a while back. Then we had that whole COVID thing, lockdown. You know, New Zealand was in prolonged lockdown for a couple of years, so there was no traveling going on. And since then, we’ve done our trip to France. But our children all live in Australia, so we try and get over to see them about four times a year. And we do, we get a home exchange and they come and stay with us. So we had Christmas in Sydney, then we went back for a long weekend into Melbourne. And the kids can come and stay. We get a, you know, a house in the suburbs… Nice.
Liz Van Montfort: Yeah, works really well.
[00:08:12] Starting with Home Exchange
Annie Sargent: So do you have to have a fancy house to do this?
Liz Van Montfort: No, you don’t. So we live in a like a townhouse, it’s a three-bedroom apartment-style house. We’ve stayed in… I actually made a note of it.
Liz Van Montfort: In Dijon, we stayed in a property which used to be a 17th-century hotel. So it had the whole inner courtyard and everything, and it was, you know, I thought it was like I was staying in Downton Abbey. Everything seemed so old, the flooring and everything, but it was gorgeous, the big doors. In Paris it was a Hausmann-style apartment building. It still… I don’t know. I can’t really tell when and if those apartments were sort of refurbed after the war or not. But it was a very classic kind of building.
Liz Van Montfort: In Australia, we’ve stayed in old terrace houses, we’ve stayed in apartment buildings.It doesn’t have to be that flash. You sign up on the website homeexchange.com, and you upload your photos and the facilities that your house has. So if you’ve got a swimming pool, if you got three bedrooms, the number of bathrooms. And the website calculates how many guest points your home is going to be worth.
Liz Van Montfort: And then you upload the photos. And then you can start communicating with people on the website. You upload your calendar so, you know, people know that your house is available. And then you start getting requests and you start making requests.
Annie Sargent: Right, right.
[00:09:51] Managing Home Exchange Logistics
Annie Sargent: So in your case, it’s your primary residence that you use for the exchange?
Liz Van Montfort: Yeah, that’s right. So what we do is, when we go over to Sydney or Melbourne, we try and get people staying here. And most of the time we do. And so the guest points we get for that, we use, we spend on properties in Sydney or Melbourne.
Annie Sargent: Right, right.
Liz Van Montfort: Yeah.
Annie Sargent: So do you have to live in an area that’s touristy or where there’s high demand?
Liz Van Montfort: No, no. Again, there’s probably some properties with caveats around Airbnb and stuff like that. But most of it is just people’s regular houses. And some people have amazing houses.
Annie Sargent: Yes, yes.
Liz Van Montfort: Yeah. We’re fortunate we live in a kind of a community, and we’ve got a communal swimming pool and spa pool and gym and tennis courts and that sort of thing. So that all comes along with, available with our property. So people get the use of it. They just get the swipe cards and they can go over and use them up.
Annie Sargent: Yes, yes. And you, you mentioned earlier that you can include a car if you would like to. Perhaps you have bicycles that you can include? Yeah.
Liz Van Montfort: Yeah, yeah.
[00:11:09] Personal Stories and Experiences
Liz Van Montfort: Christchurch is probably a bit of a gateway. So quite often, the exchanges we’ve had from people from overseas have been when they’re either arriving into New Zealand or when they’re leaving New Zealand.
Liz Van Montfort: So, you know, it might just be a couple of nights here and there. We’ve had some people from New Zealand who’ve been bringing their children to university, and they’ve come down and they’ve stayed for like four or five nights, and we’ve settled them in and that sort of thing.
Liz Van Montfort: We just try and coordinate it. And then if we get a request for a time when we’re not going over to Australia to see the children, we will go down and visit my sister or go and see friends for a couple of nights. So it’s a good excuse to get away, and all the time we’re just banking those points.
Annie Sargent: Yeah. You guys are not retired yet, are you?
Liz Van Montfort: No.
Annie Sargent: Right, right. So it doesn’t… I mean, it’s not something for retirees, it’s something for families. Yeah.
Liz Van Montfort: Yeah. No, it’s quite nice. And like everybody that’s stayed has been so respectful. There might have… I don’t know, there might have been a broken glass here and there, but it’s not… Normally, we come back and the house is in just as good a condition when we left. They’ve hoovered, they’ve changed the beds, you know, they’ve cleaned everything up, rubbish is out. It’s all good.
Annie Sargent: Right. So you haven’t had to hire a cleaner or anything like that? There’s no cleaning fees?
Liz Van Montfort: We have a cleaning fee on there, but we don’t always charge it. And it’s only for times like, like this Christmas we are going over to Melbourne. And we might be away for a couple of weeks, and during that time we might have, at the moment we’ve got one booking. So if we get another booking, then we are going to have to get someone to come in and just sort of check the house and that sort of thing. So…
Annie Sargent: Ah, yes.
Liz Van Montfort: Yeah. So we’ll definitely do the cleaning fee there. And when we were in Paris, there was a cleaning fee, because again, it was a secondary residence. And so the owner’s representative came and met us when we checked in. And then after we left, they were doing, you know, they were washing all the laundry and cleaning up.
Annie Sargent: Right. Right. Yeah, because usually when you leave a place, you don’t have to wash and dry all the sheets. You may replace them. Like you may, there might be a second set of sheets that you can use, but you’re probably going to leave some sheets and towels to be done later.
Liz Van Montfort: That’s right. Yeah. Yeah. So it just means, by having a cleaning fee on there, you’re just sort of covering your base about if you can’t get there and do it yourself.
Annie Sargent: Right. Right. So yeah, so this is something that you can add on if you need to and you don’t have to.
Liz Van Montfort: That’s right. Yep. Yeah.
[00:13:53] Preparing Your Home for Exchange
Liz Van Montfort: And we’ve just got, like for when people come here, you’ve done all of the communication beforehand, via the chat through the website and then we just do a WhatsApp conversation just for, you know, arrival times and that sort of thing.
Liz Van Montfort: We’ve got a lockbox out the front and we give them their code and then they can just come in and make themselves at home. We leave them a bottle of Canterbury wine and some Canterbury chocolate. You know, some local treats.
Liz Van Montfort: When they leave, we’ve got instructions. We’ve got a whole book that we’ve put together with, you know, how the house works, how the TV works, you know, gas cooking, gas fire and that sort of thing. The local buses, any information that they need to know about the area. They’ve got the information about the swimming pool and the tennis courts and that sort of thing. And then when they leave we just ask that they pop the sheets down in the laundry and rubbish out in the bin. And that’s really all we expect them to do. But we often come home and, you know, the place has been hoovered and the beds have been remade with the spare sheets and that sort of thing, but you know, people are pretty good. Yeah.
Annie Sargent: Yeah. Yeah, because there is a personal relationship there. I mean, not like, you don’t know them super well, but if they leave a mess, you’re going to know who did it.
Liz Van Montfort: Exactly, yeah. Yeah. And we just have a private room where we put, you know, all of our personal belongings that we don’t want to leave out. Most of everything we just leave out, but, you know, laptops and, like, the dog bed and that sort of thing, we would always pop away.
Annie Sargent: Unless they come with a dog, perhaps.
Liz Van Montfort: Yeah, exactly. Also in the website, there’s a rating system. So you know how many exchanges the people have done, if there’s any negative feedback or anything like that. It’s all there.
Liz Van Montfort: Yeah. And you’ve got to pay to be in the website, so it’s not like a Facebook group where, you know, you don’t really know who would be coming to your house.
Liz Van Montfort: It’s all pretty verified.
Annie Sargent: Yeah. No, that sounds really good. So do you kind of make some room for them? Like you make some room in the closet or in the pantry for food items or things like that?
Liz Van Montfort: Yeah. Yeah. We just sort of make sure there’s enough space, like in the fridge, in the pantry. We’ve got some extra racks in one of the bedrooms. We’re a three bedroom home, but the kids have all left, so, you know, our two guest rooms are guest rooms that we haven’t got nothing, so …
Annie Sargent: Right. So like you, in your fridge you would empty out two or three shelves and leave your stuff in the rest of the fridge.
Liz Van Montfort: That’s right. And we always tell people just to, you know, help themselves if they want to use some cooking oil or some sugar or, you know, coffee. When you do rock up at someone’s house, it’s actually really good if you think, "Oh, I might just cook something light." It means that you don’t need to go and buy cooking oil. You don’t need to go and buy sugar for your coffee and that sort of thing. So it is quite nice.
Annie Sargent: Yeah. There’s things like consumables, like perhaps your laundry detergent.
Annie Sargent: You know? They probably don’t want to buy a month’s worth of laundry detergent just to make…
Liz Van Montfort: No.
Annie Sargent: … two loads or whatever. So you can let them use some pods or whatever you use, where you are.
Liz Van Montfort: We had some people who were staying with us. They were from, I think it was Reunion Island over … off the coast of Africa.
Liz Van Montfort: Yeah.
Liz Van Montfort: And they were flying out of Christchurch and they left all of their food, and their laundry powder, and their shampoos. And everything they bought in New Zealand that, you know, for cooking, they left all of it behind. They left us all of these bits. And we’ve managed to get through their rice, and their cooking oil.
Annie Sargent: Yeah, I had a … I did a dog sitting situation once where the lady, she actually bought a lot of things to do, to cook Thai food, which she liked. She wasn’t Thai, she was American, but she wanted to cook Thai food and she left all sorts of things that I didn’t know what they were. So most of them I tried, some of them I just threw away. I was like, I have no idea how to use this, like, herb that I don’t know where it goes. I don’t know." So I just, I didn’t keep it. But it’s really interesting that people, sometimes they come and they want to make experiments or whatever, you know?
Liz Van Montfort: Yeah, these guys had lots of herbs and they had … Oh, there was milk in the fridge, and yogurt, and all sorts of things.
Annie Sargent: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, my niece just used my apartment in Spain and the same thing happened. I’m still eating yogurt that she bought for her kids. They’re really good yogurts. They’re really sweet.
Liz Van Montfort: I know.
Annie Sargent: They’re not yogurts I buy for myself usually, but …
Liz Van Montfort: Yeah, we’re the same.
Annie Sargent: But they’re in the fridge. I’m like, "I’ll use them." You know, I’m not going to throw them away. They’re perfectly fine. There’s nothing wrong with them. I just … Anyway, yeah, that’s really interesting.
(Mid-roll ad spot)
Annie Sargent: So I suppose before you leave your house, you might not even meet them since you have a key box. You just … You get the house ready and you leave and yeah.
Liz Van Montfort: Yeah, we do. We get the house clean, tidy. We put all our stuff away, make sure the guest folder is out. We get the bottle of wine, we get the chocolates. And we kind of, you know … We have a time where they’re coming in, and we don’t need to see them.
Annie Sargent: Right.
Liz Van Montfort: In the home exchange network, you can just like rent out a room as well. So we could be living here and have people come and stay.
Annie Sargent: Wow.
Liz Van Montfort: Yeah. My cousin just did a trip through Europe, for three months, and she did lots of home exchange. And when she was staying in Barcelona, she was basically flatting with a medical student.
Annie Sargent: Oh.
Liz Van Montfort: They had a spare room and they just put it on home exchange. Yeah.
Annie Sargent: Interesting. And you meet people, you know? That’s kind of cool.
Liz Van Montfort: You do. Yeah.
[00:19:56] Unexpected Situations and Flexibility
Liz Van Montfort: And the other thing that happened to her when they were in Poland, their home exchange canceled for one reason or another, I’m not sure why it canceled, but as part of the network the home exchange company, they take it onboard to be able to find you somewhere else to stay. So they were turning up, like, the … I think it was the day before. And home exchange put out a bit of a email check. Probably all the members in the same area saying, "Can you help? Can these people come and stay at your home?" And they ended up staying with a Polish family, because they couldn’t find a standalone apartment. So they got them in with a family. The family still got guest points. And it all kind of worked out and they had a really nice experience, so …
Annie Sargent: Yeah. You have to be a little bit flexible. Like, you can’t … You know?
Liz Van Montfort: You do, yeah. And look, it’s not for everybody, you know? Not everybody would want to have people coming into their homes.
Annie Sargent: Yeah.
[00:20:58] Airbnb vs. Home Exchange: Cost and Convenience
Liz Van Montfort: The other thing is that Airbnb brings you revenue, whereas this arrangement doesn’t bring you revenue, but it … But indirectly it kind of does because you aren’t paying when you go away.
Annie Sargent: Right. I mean, it’s money you’re not spending when you’re visiting some other place. So if you like to travel, it-
Liz Van Montfort: Yeah.
Annie Sargent: … seems like a win-win.
[00:21:19] Creating a Comprehensive Welcome Booklet
Annie Sargent: How elaborate is your kind of booklet, welcome booklet with instructions?
Liz Van Montfort: It’s quite elaborate. I went through each level of the house and sort of thought, "Okay, what’s here that…?" "How to use the washing machine," because I had a very, very long experience in France sitting on the floor in the kitchen trying to work out the washing machine. So I went through and I just listed all the appliances, basically how to use them, where the towels for the pool are, where … You know, what’s in each room. And then I go through what’s in the local neighborhood. Where the cafes are, supermarket, that kind of thing. Bus stops. We’ve got a couple of bus timetables for going into town if people want to go into town. That’s probably about it.
[00:22:11] Pet Care During Home Exchanges
Annie Sargent: And then you, you also … You mentioned a cat. So you had one situation where they also took care of your cat?
Liz Van Montfort: Yeah, yeah. We haven’t got pets anymore unfortunately, but yeah, they came, that was way back. And we had chickens at that point as well, and they had to feed the chickens and collect the eggs and feed the cat.
Annie Sargent: Yeah, well, they don’t mind. Yeah. And it also saves you needing to hire a cat sitter or a dog sitter or a chicken sitter, I guess.
Liz Van Montfort: Exactly. Yeah, well, when you go away, chickens are a bit of a pain actually.
Annie Sargent: Yeah. You have to take care of them, yeah. They need daily attention.
Liz Van Montfort: Yep, that’s right. That’s right.
Annie Sargent: Just like a dog. Like, you can’t …Just, yeah. No, that, that’s fascinating.
[00:22:59] History and Evolution of Home Exchange
Annie Sargent: I was just looking into the history of Home Exchange, the website.
Liz Van Montfort: Mm-hmm.
Annie Sargent: And it was founded in 1992 by a former U.S. Navy officer in California, and it was like a private … He printed out a directory of home exchange listings, and then he distributed that to members of his email circle. And then in the late ’90s, it went online, so it became like a digital home swapping space, so it, kind of it widened the circle a little bit. And it became very popular because, of course, people like this. And there was a movie, in 2006, I don’t know anything about this movie. It’s called The Holiday. Have you heard about it?
Liz Van Montfort: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I do. I love that movie. It’s a Christmas movie.
Annie Sargent: Okay. There you go. And then they expanded some more and they are in over a hundred countries. In 2017, they merged with something called GuestToGuest, which was a French home exchange that had been founded in 2011. And the two together, they decided to keep the name Home Exchange, but they adopted the GuestToGuest point-based system. Which helps because you don’t necessarily … I mean, your dates might not work otherwise.
Liz Van Montfort: That’s right.
Annie Sargent: And since then, it’s been headquartered in Paris.
Liz Van Montfort: Oh, wow.
Annie Sargent: So it’s a…
Liz Van Montfort: It must be good.
[00:24:45] Membership and Insurance Benefits
Annie Sargent: And so now, it works on a membership model. You pay a yearly fee, and the platform will work on trust, verification, community support. Like you said, if there’s a problem, they will try to find you another accommodation.
Annie Sargent: I assume problems are pretty rare because, like, I can’t imagine you would like, "Oh, yeah. I’ll leave," and without thinking it through like, most people are going to be, yeah…
Annie Sargent: So apparently now the company is headquartered in Paris, but they also have a strong North American presence in Cambridge, Massachusetts. So there you go.
Liz Van Montfort: There we go. There we go. The other thing too, as part of that whole kind of network, there’s insurance and there’s guarantees, and all sorts of things, which, you know, as a homeowner does give you peace of mind as well.
Annie Sargent: So, okay. So when you pay your yearly fee, you’re also subscribing to an insurance for the rental period.
Liz Van Montfort: Right.
Annie Sargent: Okay.
Liz Van Montfort: Yeah.
Annie Sargent: And most people probably have home insurance anyway?
Liz Van Montfort: Yeah, they would.
Annie Sargent: Yeah, so it’s supplemental.
Liz Van Montfort: Yeah.
Annie Sargent: That’s cool.
[00:25:58] Airbnb Experiences: The Good and the Bad
Liz Van Montfort: So, it’s just good that you’ve got that backup because, you know, there are a lot of… like Airbnb in New Zealand, we get people renting them out for big parties, you know, really big parties. You can get travelers that rent them out and you could end up with 15 odd people staying in them.
Annie Sargent: Right, right. Especially, I think people, for Airbnb, they look for fancy homes that they can use for a party, and it’s, they’re not going to take care of it like it’s … Yeah. No.
Liz Van Montfort: No. Yeah.
Annie Sargent: Yeah. I would never cons- I don’t know. I mean at first, we did use Airbnb when … we even did it as a… an actual bedroom rental in Canada. I think it was in Toronto. And the guy, he didn’t sleep at the house. He would go sleep at his girlfriend’s house. But he worked in the house that he was renting on Airbnb during the day, and then he would go sleep at his girlfriend’s house. And it was fine, but it was like a decade ago. It was early on in the Airbnb kind of thing, and it was fine and…
Annie Sargent: But as time went on, I found Airbnb was getting more just, it’s like some apartment that somebody furnished with the cheapest IKEA things they could find. And most of them are companies. That’s what they do. They just buy apartments. They refurbish them with cheapo IKEA stuff, which some IKEA stuff is good, but some of it is really not okay. And so, you know. Yeah.I don’t have the instinct to go to Airbnb anymore. I just don’t.
Liz Van Montfort: When we were in France, we booked, we stayed in… Well, no, we stayed in Airbnb once in France, which was fantastic, but it was down in Provence and it was adjacent to the guy’s house. . So he was there all the time.
Annie Sargent: Mm-hmm.
Liz Van Montfort: So, you know, that’s quite good control over your asset and your visitors and stuff like that. There’s not going to be a party, you know?
Annie Sargent: Right. That, well, not one he wouldn’t know about anyway.
Liz Van Montfort: That’s right.
Liz Van Montfort: But then when we had one booked for Barcelona, and we arrived in Barcelona, and it was out at the um, [1:00:24] Castelldefels? I think. And we arrived there…
Annie Sargent: Which is just, just south of Barcelona.
Liz Van Montfort: Castelldefels. Yeah. We arrived there, and we didn’t have the key code, the gate code to get into the place. And like, we’d paid in full and stuff like that. And we rung up the guy and finally got hold of him, and he said, "Oh," he said, "No," he said, "I’ve sold that apartment," and just hung up, and then the next thing, ding, Airbnb full refund. And we’re Saturday night, side of the road…
Annie Sargent: Oh, geez.
Liz Van Montfort: … getting dark, 30 degrees, and I’m like, "Oh my God, what are we going to do?"
Annie Sargent: Oh, that’s terrible. And… I had a bad experience. It wasn’t me, but our home sitter, our dog sitter, arrived at our house just a few weeks ago, and she was arriving a few days too soon. We hadn’t vacated the house yet. So she found an Airbnb not far from where we live, a few kilometers away, and I said, "Okay, don’t worry, I’ll just take you there, and, you know, you’ll meet the dog, you’ll meet us, I’ll show you around the house, and then I’ll take you to your Airbnb, and then you can come back after we’ve left," which is what we had arranged.
Annie Sargent: Well, when I took her to the Airbnb, there was no numbers on the house, so there was no way to find the actual apartment. I parked, I got out of the car, and I’m French, this is like… I understand how number, you know, street numberings and things work. I couldn’t figure it out. I knocked on several doors, nobody was home and answering, and so I went to find… She went to find the phone number for the guy, and it was a… The phone number, he was no longer using it.
Liz Van Montfort: Oh my gosh.
Annie Sargent: So even the phone number didn’t work.
Liz Van Montfort: Ah, no.
Liz Van Montfort: I got pretty, you know, upset at this situation. I was like, "What do we do?" She can’t get in. So of course, I couldn’t… I mean, I wasn’t going to let her on the street, I would’ve let her stay with us, you know… Yeah.
Annie Sargent: … even though that’s not what we had planned, but I was just not happy with it, and she had also sent an email, and eventually, like two hours later, she heard from the guy and said, and he said, he gave us a different phone number, and said, "Oh, but it’s the house…" He just explained where the entry was and was like, "There are no numbers. How many… How are we supposed to know?"
Annie Sargent: And it was like a bunch of row houses, so it really wasn’t clear. And he said, "Oh, the phone number? Yeah, that’s an old number. I didn’t update the website." Like, okay, you know, Airbnb, not okay. Like, they have no idea-
Liz Van Montfort: No.
Annie Sargent: … who they’re renting from. You don’t know. And who knows? This guy might have gotten somebody to write a positive recommendation or two and that’s it, and then people trust that. But no, no, there are too many instances where you show up at an Airbnb and things are not the way you were told they were going to be at all.
[00:31:34] Challenges with Airbnb in France
Liz Van Montfort: No, and I mean, I contacted you because you spoke a couple of months back about Paris and how there’s quite a big pushback against Airbnb too.
Annie Sargent: Yeah.
Liz Van Montfort: Yeah.
Annie Sargent: Yeah. Paris, they just don’t want this because people who put up, even if it is just their own apartment that they have bought as… French people like to have more than one residence, okay? This is… Like, as soon as a French person gets a bit of money, they’re going to buy a place. That’s just how it is.
Liz Van Montfort: Yeah.
Annie Sargent: And I assume that’s human nature, if you somehow walk into $100,000 or euros or whatever, you’re not going to put it in your bank account to sit there. You’re going to do something with it, right?
Liz Van Montfort: Yeah.
Annie Sargent: And most French people, they would never go buy a fancy car, but they will buy an apartment that they could use for their kids to go to college in Paris or in a big city near where they live, and they would probably keep that apartment and rent it out, either to students, but you know, students, they can be a bit loud and difficult at times, and there’s turnover, or they could do an Airbnb.
Annie Sargent: And, so there are a lot of Airbnbs in France that really could have been rented out to young people, to students, to young families. And the people at the lower end of the scale, the smaller places, the less expensive places, are finding it really, really hard to find a place to live, because it’s more profitable to set it up as an Airbnb and rent it out that way, and that way you still have access to it occasionally, and you haven’t rented out year round.
Annie Sargent: So yeah, France does not want this to get out of control, especially since, I’m pretty sure Airbnb being a corporation from the US, they probably don’t even pay taxes in France. They probably don’t, you know?
Liz Van Montfort: No. No.
Annie Sargent: They probably worked it out so that they, you know?
Liz Van Montfort: Yeah. That’d be pretty good at avoiding.
Annie Sargent: Yeah.
Liz Van Montfort: Yeah.
Annie Sargent: We make the money in France, but we don’t pay any taxes in France because, you know, we’re biggy. So huh, that’s how it is.
Annie Sargent: So at anyway, Airbnb, I don’t see any… I would avoid, let’s put it this way. I avoid it personally and I would recommend that people avoid it. Not that there’s not people that have good experiences with Airbnb in France…
Liz Van Montfort: Yeah.
Annie Sargent: …but I think you have to be prepared for things to go wrong as well, and that’s very unpleasant when you’ve had a long flight. I don’t know, your Barcelona example, were you arriving directly from New Zealand?
Liz Van Montfort: No, we were… We came from Lyon. But it was 5:30 at night and it was, you know, 25, 28 degrees or something. It was dark and there was no Ubers, there was no bus, there was no way of getting around. And so the closest hotel or motel kind of arrangement, we walked, and it was… it took us over an hour with our luggage.
Annie Sargent: Yeah. No, that is not okay. That is not okay. So, yeah. I would recommend Home Exchange with much morecertainty that it would work out than- than Airbnb, I think.
Liz Van Montfort: Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It’s not for everybody, you know, home exchange.
Annie Sargent: Yeah.
Liz Van Montfort: It’s not for everybody.
[00:34:57] Who Should Consider Home Exchange?
Liz Van Montfort: A lot of your listeners are the slow travelers. You know, they like to go and take their time and get off the beaten track and that sort of thing.
Annie Sargent: Yeah. Who would you say it’s not for? Like…
Liz Van Montfort: Probably not for your… maybe for the hotel travelers.
Annie Sargent: Yeah. If you can pay 300-500 euros a night for a hotel, you probably should do that. If that’s how you like to travel, do that.
Annie Sargent: Yeah. Some people like staying in hotels and eating out in restaurants and that sort of thing. We’re not. We’re probably a little bit more, a bit more bohemian, you know. We used to go camping with the kids and we had a caravan for a while and… Yeah.
Liz Van Montfort: My husband was a backpacker around Europe when he was young. So yeah, probably a little bit more relaxed in the traveling sense. Yeah.
(Mid-roll ad spot)
[00:35:46] Preparing Your Home for Exchange
Annie Sargent: I recorded another episode about Home Exchange a few weeks ago. I haven’t put it out yet. But I tried to set up theHome Exchange thing and my login, it wasn’t happy with it. So I just need to try it again because it-
Liz Van Montfort: Yeah.
Annie Sargent: … something went wrong with the setup. But I also need to make a lot of photos and, you know, just stage the house a little bit. Make sure all the lights work and things. But I mean, it doesn’t need to be fancy, like, you know.
Liz Van Montfort: It doesn’t need to be fancy. That’s the thing, you know,your pile of books is going to be still sitting there and-
Annie Sargent: Yeah.
Liz Van Montfort: You know, all your food in your pantry is… the… It doesn’t need to be cleaned out. They don’t need to be like real estate photos. They just need to be home photos.
Annie Sargent: Yeah. Home photos. Do you like label things a lot to make it easier for them to find things?
Liz Van Montfort: No. We leave the coffee and tea and that sort of stuff out on the bench, you know, by the coffee maker. Everything’s there. But no, we don’t label anything.
Annie Sargent: Yeah.
Liz Van Montfort: Food’s in the pantry.
Annie Sargent: Photos perhaps. That’s what I was thinking I would do, is take some- take some photos. Like my coffee maker, there’s a little drawer underneath where you pull the drawer and there’s coffee pods in there, but maybe people wouldn’t recognize that it’s a drawer with coffee. They would think it’s just a base. I don’t know. So maybe do a little booklet with photos that show what you mean.
Liz Van Montfort: Yeah, or just leave the little drawer out, you know, when they first come.
Annie Sargent: That’s true.
Liz Van Montfort: When they first come, just go, "Oh, that’s where the coffee pods are."
Annie Sargent: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, it’s true. It’s true. Ah, wonderful.
Liz Van Montfort: Okay. Doesn’t need to be too fancy.
Annie Sargent: Not too fancy. Wonderful.
[00:37:28] Final Thoughts and Future Plans
Annie Sargent: Well, Liz, you’ve been wonderful to talk to again. Thank you so much for sharing your experience. I think it’s invaluable. I have absolutely nothing to gain in telling people to go to Home Exchange. They’re not paying me for this. It’s not…
Liz Van Montfort: Nope.
Annie Sargent: You know, they’re not paying you for this either.
Liz Van Montfort: Nope. No.
Annie Sargent: You’re not going to get anything out of it. It’s just something that we want to increase awareness. And also if you want to do… you know, if you want to live like a local and you mean it, there’s no better way. You actually live like a local because you’re in a… somebody local’s apartment or house or…
Liz Van Montfort: Yeah. Yeah. That’s right. We’re sort of hoping in a few years time we can come back to France and do a longer trip again and do a bit of pet sitting and do a bit of home exchange, and really be able to live a bit more like a local.
Annie Sargent: Yeah. I think it makes a huge difference.
Annie Sargent: Thank you so much, Liz, and happy travels.
Liz Van Montfort: Thank you.
Annie Sargent: Okay.
Liz Van Montfort: Au revoir.
Annie Sargent: Au revoir. Merci beaucoup.
[00:38:37] Thank You Patrons
Annie Sargent: Again, I want to thank my patrons for giving back and supporting the show. Patrons get several exclusive rewards for doing that. You can see them at patreon.com/joinus.
Annie Sargent: This week, I don’t have any new patrons to thank by name because I’m recording this a little bit early, I’m going to Paris. But I do want to say a heartfelt thank you to everyone who already supports the podcast. Whether you joined last week or years ago, your support truly keeps this show going and I appreciate it more than you know. Would you join them too? You can do it for as little as $3 a month, but if you can afford it, I would love to have you pledge more so you have access to more of the rewards. Go to patreon.com/joinus.
Annie Sargent: And to support Elyse, go to patreon.com/elysart.
[00:39:30] VoiceMap Tours
Annie Sargent: If you like exploring Paris without following a group or a raised umbrella, my VoiceMap tours might just be the thing for you. They’re self-guided, they work offline, and they don’t mind if you stop for snacks or a glass of wine.
Annie Sargent: You’ll find them on the VoiceMap app. Just search for Annie Sargent. And if you’d like a nice discount, you can buy VoiceMap tour codes for my tours on joinusinfrance.com/boutique. It works exactly the same. You just get a nice discount because I cut out Google and Apple that way.
Annie Sargent: And if you’re planning a trip to France and would like some expert help, you can hire me as your itinerary consultant.
Annie Sargent: If you already have a plan, I’ll help you fine-tune it and if you’re just feeling overwhelmed by all the choices and not sure what sources to trust, I can design a custom plan for you. You’ll find the details at joinusinfrance.com/boutique.
[00:40:29] Tour Triangle
Annie Sargent: I want to share a quick update about what’s changing in Paris in 2026 because several large projects are finally reaching completion or are about to begin after years of debate.
Annie Sargent: First, the one that gets the most attention is the Tour Triangle. After years of controversy and construction, the Tour Triangle is scheduled to be delivered in the summer of 2026. The project dates back to 2008 and construction officially began in 2021 at Porte de Versailles in the 15th arrondissement.
Annie Sargent: Once completed, it will be the third tallest structure in Paris after the Eiffel Tower and the Tour Montparnasse. This is a very large project, about 91,000 square meters spread over 42 floors with a total investment estimated at 700 million euros. The building is designed to mix uses, offices, and co-working spaces, but also shops, a health center, a crèche, cultural spaces, and a public belvedere.
Annie Sargent: Yay! I’ll be going up that. Supporters see it as a symbol of a modern, evolving Paris. Critics still denounce it as too much glass and concrete. Either way, it’s about to become part of the skyline.
[00:41:53] Louis Vitton Hotel in Paris
Annie Sargent: Next, something very different, a luxury hotel project on the Champs-Élysées.
Annie Sargent: In 2026, the first Louis Vuitton hotel is expected to open at 103-111 Avenue des Champs-Élysées. The building used to house the Élysée Palace Hotel, which closed during World War I. Beyond the hotel itself, the project will also include retail space and areas dedicated to art exhibitions.
Annie Sargent: This one is already being described as one of the most anticipated hotel openings of the decade. And they’re going to change the way the roundabout works around the Arc de Triomphe as well. It’s going to be, a lot of things are going to get narrowed, there’s going to be, tree islands in the center. I’ve seen sketches, I’m not sure what it’s going to look like in the end, but they are working on that as well.
Annie Sargent: But I don’t think it’s going to be completed in 2026, but just so you know, that changes are coming to the Étoile Roundabout as well.
Annie Sargent: Another major transformation is happening on the Grand Boulevard with the former BNP building on Rue Bergère, the historic headquarters of the Comptoir National d’Escompte de Paris, later BNP, is being converted into a mixed use complex called Îlot Bergère. Îlot Bergère, Îlot Bergère, oh, that’s going to be a funny name to say.
Annie Sargent: Delivery is expected in early 2026. The plan includes a hotel style accommodation, a restaurant, an auditorium, a fitness center, meeting spaces, and services open to the neighborhood.
[00:43:34] The Parc de la Villette
Annie Sargent: Moving to greener news, the Parc de la Villette. In spring 2026, the park will gain 15,000 square meters of additional green space near the Grandes Halles. The highlight will be a new Ferme de la Villette, wow, installed in a rehabilitated historic hall.
Annie Sargent: The goal is to create a calm shared space focused on nature, education, and observation. Opening is planned for the end of March 2026, and I bet a lot of kids are going to like going to the farm.
[00:44:10] Place de la Concorde
Annie Sargent: And now, one of the biggest long-term projects, Place de la Concorde.
Annie Sargent: By the end of 2026, work expected to begin on a major redesign of the Place de la Concorde. The goal is to turn what is currently a huge traffic mess of a circle into a more pedestrian-friendly, greener, and calmer space. Plans include restoring large lawns, filling in car tunnels, widening sidewalks along the Seine, planting more trees, and further limiting car traffic. Yay! Following the logic already applied to Rue de Rivoli and much of Paris.
Annie Sargent: This is a long project estimated at three years or more with a projected completion date around 2029.
Annie Sargent: So, 2026 won’t be the year when Paris launches brand new mega projects. It is, after all, an election year. But it will be a year when long debated changes finally become visible.
[00:45:10] The Tour Montparnasse
Annie Sargent: The other thing that always gets people talking in Paris is the Tour Montparnasse.
Annie Sargent: According to recent reporting, the tower is about to be emptied of its occupants. Offices and shops are gradually closing in preparation for a major renovation and judging by public reaction, a lot of Parisians are relieved.
Annie Sargent: The shopping center at the base of the tower has a reputation for being gloomy, outdated, and unpleasant.
Annie Sargent: Many people see the whole complex as a relic of the 1970s that never aged that gracefully.
Annie Sargent: Which brings us to a bit of history. Here’s a very quick timeline.
Annie Sargent: 1969, construction begins.
Annie Sargent: 1973, the Tour Montparnasse opened. At 210 meters, it becomes the tallest building in France at the time. It is built during a period when Paris embraced modernism, concrete, and verticality.
Annie Sargent: Public backlash is immediate. So immediate, in fact, that after Montparnasse, Paris essentially said, "Never again in the historic center." That’s one reason you don’t see skyscrapers in central Paris today. La Defense exists largely because of Montparnasse, and it is off the main drag. Over the decades, the tower became deeply controversial.
Annie Sargent: Some people love it because it’s unmistakable. I like it because that way, I know where Montparnasse is. Others hate it because it dominates the skyline in a way that feels completely un-Parisian.
Annie Sargent: Online reactions to the current news range from sarcasm to dark humor. People compare it to towers from the Lord of the Rings.
Annie Sargent: Mordor comes up a lot.
Annie Sargent: Now, an important clarification. The tower is not going to be demolished. That idea surfaces regularly, but it’s not happening. The plan is renovation, and if you read comments from people who actually worked there, you understand why. Former occupants describe a constant elevator congestion, poor insulation, heating that fails in the winter, air conditioner that fails in the summer, plumbing problems that drag on for months.
Annie Sargent: In short, not a great place to work. So, while the tone online is often exaggerated, the underlying complaints are very real.
Annie Sargent: For many Parisians, the Tour Montparnasse represents a moment of architectural hubris, a time when Paris tried to be something it really isn’t, and the upcoming renovation won’t suddenly make everyone love the building, but it may make it a bit more functional, safer, and less resented.
Annie Sargent: And if nothing else, it’s a reminder that in Paris, even the most controversial buildings eventually get reconsidered.
Annie Sargent: And Paris will keep doing what it’s always done, change slowly, argue loudly, and eventually move on.
Annie Sargent: My thanks to podcast editors, Anne and Christian Cotovan, who produced the transcripts and the audio.
[00:48:15] Next week on the podcast
Annie Sargent: Next week on the podcast, an episode with Brooke Koss Cunningham about the Saint-Étienne, the city and the area, and why it might be the best off-the-beaten-track city in France for you.
Annie Sargent: Thank you so much for listening, and I hope you join me next time, so we can look around France together. Au revoir!
[00:48:37] Copyright
Annie Sargent: The join us in France Travel Podcast is written, hosted, and produced by Annie Sargent and copyright 2026 by Addicted to France. It is released under a Creative Comments, attribution, non-commercial, no derivatives license.
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Episode PageCategory: France on a Budget