It doesn't sync in the way you describe.

It is a direct connection. VirtualBox directly maps the path inside the vm to the path on the host machine.

If your making changes to files on either the host machine path or the homestead code folder path and they are not the same then likely something is wrong with the configuration. Did you get any errors when starting homestead up ?

You could also open the VirtualBox GUI and check the settings to see if they were mapped correctly.

Open the VirtualBox Manager, right-click on the homestead vm, select settings, then at the bottom left list Shared Folders, should list the shared paths, the default code path in this view is name = home_vagrant_Code and path = C:\local_devel\Code

Not recommending you change it here, would be best in the homestead config.

Hope that helps