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Sooo.. w/o getting into my history too deeply, my ex and I left the US in 2006 and worked freelance/remote. Wired did an article about us in 2008 living in a so

Sooo.. w/o getting into my history too deeply, my ex and I left the US in 2006 and worked freelance/remote. Wired did an article about us in 2008 living in a solar van when that was, like, unheard of. It seems like every few years a new batch of people want to try this approach, and it's always popular with the press to write about it. Sometimes it works out. I think it's a great way to live, and it teaches you a lot about yourself. We used to just find vacation rentals. One of the key tricks I used when AirBnb came out was figuring out who the owner was and contacting them directly with a cash offer for 3 months rent with ~25% (sometimes 50%) knocked off if I pay in USD up front. So I'd say most of the places I lived from 2009 on (about 20 places?) I found on AirBnb, thanks guys, and then paid cash to the owner. Only once or twice, for a couple days at most, have I ever actually used AirBnb to run a transaction for me. Not for nothing, I now live in a house I own in Portland with an AirBnb right next to me whose owners are off living in some other AirBnb out of the country, and I'm pissed as fuck that I'm living next to what's turned into a goddamn motel. But it's wonderful that the AirBnb staff now get the same in-system privileges that unionized airline employees have had for decades. It would be better if it wasn't literally gutting every city from Amsterdam to Bangkok in the process and turning them into hipster slums.

mdoms 5y ago
> It would be better if it wasn't literally gutting every city from Amsterdam to Bangkok in the process and turning them into hipster slums. Do you not recognise that you were the exact kind of person ruining cities the world over?
- noduerme 5y ago
  No, I don't think that's fair at all, since I didn't live in central cities for one thing (more often villages and small towns, or suburbs where I would be the only foreigner), but also because like I said above, the small number of long-term nomads who move to a place to live and work is absolutely dwarfed by the vast number of tourists who are now using up to 50% of apartments in places like Lisbon as if they were hotel rooms. I think there are sustainable forms of travel that don't place undue stress on local housing markets and economies. Your assumption is incorrect.
carabiner 5y ago
What?
- noduerme 5y ago
  Which part?
- entropy_ 5y ago
  As far as I can understand it: 1 - I'm proud of having cheated Airbnb out of their commission when helping me find housing so I could live like a hipster 2 - I hate living next to Airbnb hipsters Needless to say: not a lot of coherent thought in that comment...
  - noduerme 5y ago
    Eh, no. Airbnb rentals don't go for 3-6 months. (So what I was doing wouldn't have even been possible via their website). I wasn't "living like a hipster", I wasn't on a work-vacation. There was no "cheating" involved, since all the people who post on Airbnb also post on other websites, local and international. Airbnb just had a nicer map. It ain't cheating Airbnb if the landlord is happy to cut out the middleman. And when I stay in a place I learn the language and live there and try to integrate into society. I'm not there to party for a weekend. What I'm referring to with the hollowing out of city centers like Lisbon, Prague, Amsterdam... people like me renting there for 3-6 months are not a threat to people who live and work there, because I'm negotiating close-to standard price for a furnished apartment (and the owner knows that the stability of being paid up front makes up for the extra they might make if their Airbnb were booked every day). So no, I wouldn't be treating the place as a tourist destination or undermining the locals, or partying and reducing their quality of life in their own places next door.
    - ErneX 5y ago
      3-6 months rentals are not what people usually lease for, at least here it's 3 to 5 years contracts and then keep extending for one year periods. Any flat here rented for 3 to 6 months is a holiday rental and besides being more expensive it's one flat less available for the people that actually want to live in the city.
wingerlang 5y ago
Did you have any thoughts about the home owners around you while you were doing the same thing?
- noduerme 5y ago
  Yes, I did. The whole point is that I wasn't just a one-or-two-day ghost. I lived in these places for as I said 3-6 months (in one case almost a year). So I knew my neighbors, and treated them as I would neighbors in any other apartment I rented as a regular tenant. [edit] I should just add that I'm as embarrassed to make noise or screw with anyone's living space as a homeowner as I was as a tenant. I could make $400/nt renting my own house on Airbnb and go live in Morocco or Chile and just live off the fat of the land (read: being an American with access to credit). I frankly would never do it. I'd rent it to long-term tenants, or I'd sell it, before I'd subject my neighbors on the other side to what the airbnb jerks have subjected me to. And as a tenant, even with a piano that's calling me to play at 2am, I'm not going to wake anyone up.
  - 4ad 5y ago
    > So I knew my neighbors, and treated them as I would neighbors in any other apartment I rented as a regular tenant. Tangential, but I have lived for 10 years in the same apartment and I have never interacted with my neighbours. Not even once.
    - noduerme 5y ago
      Elevators. I talk a lot and only about 50% of people seem to mind.
      - 4ad 5y ago
        The etiquette seems to be that if someone is waiting for the very small elevator, the other person takes the stairs.
  - gnfargbl 5y ago
    What it is that leads you to believe the 3-6 months thing is so significant? There are (a very small proportion of) AirBnB guests who are awful. There are (a very small proportion of) longer-term tenants who are awful. At least with AirBnB, the awful guests are gone after a couple of nights. I know some AirBnBs are used as party destinations, and that's different -- but it's a problem with those hosts, not with the platform. AirBnB make it pretty easy to telegraph that your property is completely unsuitable for loud gatherings, and anyone who puts a piano in a short-term rental is an idiot.
amelius 5y ago
Solar van sounds nice, except if you're well over 6ft tall :/
- noduerme 5y ago
  Actually the guy we bought the van from before we added the solar panels was this suuuper tall Swiss guy, like 6'4 at least, and somehow he fit in there with his girlfriend and a whole six boxes of survival kit, maps, cooking equipment and such, neatly stacked under the bed platform. I always wondered how he handled it, but you can do a lot of things for love ;)
  - Cthulhu_ 5y ago
    In my experience having gone on vacation in a caravan, generally you don't live inside the van for very long; it's where you sleep or take shelter from the weather, the rest of the time you're outside, or (in the case of a caravan) in a tent attached to the front that's usually 2.5-3 meters high up.
    - noduerme 5y ago
      Yeah, it was a bit like that. We lived in/out of it for a year, it was a little Mitsubishi box van from the 1980s; and pretty much we lived outside it with tarps and tent-poles, set up camp out the side and slept inside. It was in Australia, so you wouldn't want to sleep on the ground, and occasionally kangaroos would come through and tear down the tent..(I got into a stand-off with one that knocked over our table in the middle of the night once, thought someone was going through our stuff, jumped out bare naked in the desert with a samurai katana I kept under the bed - but I was drunk enough I saw the beast and retreated into the van and let the thing be)
Cthulhu_ 5y ago
I mean, this is the way; I don't believe people actually want to go through companies like AirBnB, Uber and Uber Eats, all those in between parties if they can help it; if they can skip the fees, and especially if they can get long term tenants, then great. And if by paying with cash you can avoid taxes as well, great. The only thing there is that it's a risk, e.g. what if they thrash the place, but airbnb may not even give a shit about that and accuse you (the owner) of fraud. That risk is also mitigated by paying up front like you said.
- noduerme 5y ago
  Well as the renter in these situations, at least with cash you can see the place first. If you pre-pay into a dirty airbnb, good luck getting your money back.
randomsearch 5y ago
I guess you did consider the possibility that by using Airbnb to find accommodation you were nonetheless perpetuating the system by which they have turned cities into "hipster slums"? The three months doesn't make much difference. I might be a responsible tenant when I use airbnb, whether in lots of short stays or one big one, but that doesn't stop other guests being awful. Your three months just incentivised the owners to keep it as a short-term let. Full disclosure: I have used Airbnb in the past.
post_break 5y ago
If you're a renter this is squatter bait. You better know the squatter rules before ever considering doing rentals off the books like that.
- rcpt 5y ago
  I don't follow
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - dominotw 5y ago
    legal system makes it next to impossible to kickout a squatter. Someone can live rent free for years.
  - wmeredith 5y ago
    Doing rentals to tenants without a paper trail would allow them to claim squatter's rights, which are a nightmare for landlords.
    - gowld 5y ago
      How does a paper trail prevent that? A paper trails gives the squatter far more rights, since they have proof of their right to live there.
      - albedoa 5y ago
        The paper trail provides proof of the start of the occupancy. It provides proof that the occupier does not live there.
    - Aperocky 5y ago
      OP was doing it outside of US so I'd imagine such cases would have been settled very differently.
renewiltord 5y ago
Haha, another in the genre of "the cut-off is exactly what I did - any less / any more and you're worse": - I moved in to this place back in X. All the people after me are transplants and ruining the place. - I stayed for X months. All these people who stay less than X are terrible. - I drive a car of size X. All these people who drive a car of size > X are terrible.
jkukul 5y ago
> and I'm pissed as fuck that I'm living next to what's turned into a goddamn motel. Is your anger directed at Airbnb or at the tourists? Both parties just do what's in their best interest. It's a typical economical transaction which makes both sides better-off. The problem is that the Airbnb situation creates externalities. In your case it's annoying neighbours and, in the broader sense, it's e.g. the gentrification. Local governments are the ones to blame here and the ones who should be responsible to manage the externalities. There must be some clever policies to mitigate the problems.
biztos 5y ago
Um, no, that’s not even remotely true of Bangkok. Rhetorical flourishes are fun, actually getting to know a city is also fun. As we say in Bangkok: Recommend!

mdoms 5y ago

> It would be better if it wasn't literally gutting every city from Amsterdam to Bangkok in the process and turning them into hipster slums. Do you not recognise that you were the exact kind of person ruining cities the world over?

noduerme 5y ago
No, I don't think that's fair at all, since I didn't live in central cities for one thing (more often villages and small towns, or suburbs where I would be the only foreigner), but also because like I said above, the small number of long-term nomads who move to a place to live and work is absolutely dwarfed by the vast number of tourists who are now using up to 50% of apartments in places like Lisbon as if they were hotel rooms. I think there are sustainable forms of travel that don't place undue stress on local housing markets and economies. Your assumption is incorrect.

carabiner 5y ago

What?

noduerme 5y ago
Which part?
entropy_ 5y ago
As far as I can understand it: 1 - I'm proud of having cheated Airbnb out of their commission when helping me find housing so I could live like a hipster 2 - I hate living next to Airbnb hipsters Needless to say: not a lot of coherent thought in that comment...
- noduerme 5y ago
  Eh, no. Airbnb rentals don't go for 3-6 months. (So what I was doing wouldn't have even been possible via their website). I wasn't "living like a hipster", I wasn't on a work-vacation. There was no "cheating" involved, since all the people who post on Airbnb also post on other websites, local and international. Airbnb just had a nicer map. It ain't cheating Airbnb if the landlord is happy to cut out the middleman. And when I stay in a place I learn the language and live there and try to integrate into society. I'm not there to party for a weekend. What I'm referring to with the hollowing out of city centers like Lisbon, Prague, Amsterdam... people like me renting there for 3-6 months are not a threat to people who live and work there, because I'm negotiating close-to standard price for a furnished apartment (and the owner knows that the stability of being paid up front makes up for the extra they might make if their Airbnb were booked every day). So no, I wouldn't be treating the place as a tourist destination or undermining the locals, or partying and reducing their quality of life in their own places next door.
  - ErneX 5y ago
    3-6 months rentals are not what people usually lease for, at least here it's 3 to 5 years contracts and then keep extending for one year periods. Any flat here rented for 3 to 6 months is a holiday rental and besides being more expensive it's one flat less available for the people that actually want to live in the city.

wingerlang 5y ago

Did you have any thoughts about the home owners around you while you were doing the same thing?

noduerme 5y ago
Yes, I did. The whole point is that I wasn't just a one-or-two-day ghost. I lived in these places for as I said 3-6 months (in one case almost a year). So I knew my neighbors, and treated them as I would neighbors in any other apartment I rented as a regular tenant. [edit] I should just add that I'm as embarrassed to make noise or screw with anyone's living space as a homeowner as I was as a tenant. I could make $400/nt renting my own house on Airbnb and go live in Morocco or Chile and just live off the fat of the land (read: being an American with access to credit). I frankly would never do it. I'd rent it to long-term tenants, or I'd sell it, before I'd subject my neighbors on the other side to what the airbnb jerks have subjected me to. And as a tenant, even with a piano that's calling me to play at 2am, I'm not going to wake anyone up.
- 4ad 5y ago
  > So I knew my neighbors, and treated them as I would neighbors in any other apartment I rented as a regular tenant. Tangential, but I have lived for 10 years in the same apartment and I have never interacted with my neighbours. Not even once.
  - noduerme 5y ago
    Elevators. I talk a lot and only about 50% of people seem to mind.
    - 4ad 5y ago
      The etiquette seems to be that if someone is waiting for the very small elevator, the other person takes the stairs.
- gnfargbl 5y ago
  What it is that leads you to believe the 3-6 months thing is so significant? There are (a very small proportion of) AirBnB guests who are awful. There are (a very small proportion of) longer-term tenants who are awful. At least with AirBnB, the awful guests are gone after a couple of nights. I know some AirBnBs are used as party destinations, and that's different -- but it's a problem with those hosts, not with the platform. AirBnB make it pretty easy to telegraph that your property is completely unsuitable for loud gatherings, and anyone who puts a piano in a short-term rental is an idiot.

amelius 5y ago

Solar van sounds nice, except if you're well over 6ft tall :/

noduerme 5y ago
Actually the guy we bought the van from before we added the solar panels was this suuuper tall Swiss guy, like 6'4 at least, and somehow he fit in there with his girlfriend and a whole six boxes of survival kit, maps, cooking equipment and such, neatly stacked under the bed platform. I always wondered how he handled it, but you can do a lot of things for love ;)
- Cthulhu_ 5y ago
  In my experience having gone on vacation in a caravan, generally you don't live inside the van for very long; it's where you sleep or take shelter from the weather, the rest of the time you're outside, or (in the case of a caravan) in a tent attached to the front that's usually 2.5-3 meters high up.
  - noduerme 5y ago
    Yeah, it was a bit like that. We lived in/out of it for a year, it was a little Mitsubishi box van from the 1980s; and pretty much we lived outside it with tarps and tent-poles, set up camp out the side and slept inside. It was in Australia, so you wouldn't want to sleep on the ground, and occasionally kangaroos would come through and tear down the tent..(I got into a stand-off with one that knocked over our table in the middle of the night once, thought someone was going through our stuff, jumped out bare naked in the desert with a samurai katana I kept under the bed - but I was drunk enough I saw the beast and retreated into the van and let the thing be)

Cthulhu_ 5y ago

I mean, this is the way; I don't believe people actually want to go through companies like AirBnB, Uber and Uber Eats, all those in between parties if they can help it; if they can skip the fees, and especially if they can get long term tenants, then great. And if by paying with cash you can avoid taxes as well, great. The only thing there is that it's a risk, e.g. what if they thrash the place, but airbnb may not even give a shit about that and accuse you (the owner) of fraud. That risk is also mitigated by paying up front like you said.

noduerme 5y ago
Well as the renter in these situations, at least with cash you can see the place first. If you pre-pay into a dirty airbnb, good luck getting your money back.

randomsearch 5y ago

I guess you did consider the possibility that by using Airbnb to find accommodation you were nonetheless perpetuating the system by which they have turned cities into "hipster slums"? The three months doesn't make much difference. I might be a responsible tenant when I use airbnb, whether in lots of short stays or one big one, but that doesn't stop other guests being awful. Your three months just incentivised the owners to keep it as a short-term let. Full disclosure: I have used Airbnb in the past.

post_break 5y ago

If you're a renter this is squatter bait. You better know the squatter rules before ever considering doing rentals off the books like that.

rcpt 5y ago
I don't follow
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- dominotw 5y ago
  legal system makes it next to impossible to kickout a squatter. Someone can live rent free for years.
- wmeredith 5y ago
  Doing rentals to tenants without a paper trail would allow them to claim squatter's rights, which are a nightmare for landlords.
  - gowld 5y ago
    How does a paper trail prevent that? A paper trails gives the squatter far more rights, since they have proof of their right to live there.
    - albedoa 5y ago
      The paper trail provides proof of the start of the occupancy. It provides proof that the occupier does not live there.
  - Aperocky 5y ago
    OP was doing it outside of US so I'd imagine such cases would have been settled very differently.

renewiltord 5y ago

Haha, another in the genre of "the cut-off is exactly what I did - any less / any more and you're worse": - I moved in to this place back in X. All the people after me are transplants and ruining the place. - I stayed for X months. All these people who stay less than X are terrible. - I drive a car of size X. All these people who drive a car of size > X are terrible.

jkukul 5y ago

> and I'm pissed as fuck that I'm living next to what's turned into a goddamn motel. Is your anger directed at Airbnb or at the tourists? Both parties just do what's in their best interest. It's a typical economical transaction which makes both sides better-off. The problem is that the Airbnb situation creates externalities. In your case it's annoying neighbours and, in the broader sense, it's e.g. the gentrification. Local governments are the ones to blame here and the ones who should be responsible to manage the externalities. There must be some clever policies to mitigate the problems.

biztos 5y ago

Um, no, that’s not even remotely true of Bangkok. Rhetorical flourishes are fun, actually getting to know a city is also fun. As we say in Bangkok: Recommend!