You want to travel full time, but are not sure how to find places to stay that are affordable, comfortable, and in interesting locations worth exploring. Well, this is our life. We’re moving about every few weeks or months, and that means we need to continuously look for a place to lay our heads each night. Some might see this as a daunting task. For us it’s a fun treasure hunt. We enjoy the thrill of uncovering great deals and potential unique experiences. With unlimited flexibility, we can look at remote mountain cabins, ocean view condos, or high-rise city apartments. We can try a popular tourist or historic town, or stay on a farm. The choices are virtually limitless, and that can make the process intimidating. No worries, we are here to help.
Before you start your search, you need define your “must have’s.” For 1 week to multi-month stays, our “must have’s” are: a kitchen with a real stove, oven and microwave; good WIFI; and a bedroom with a real bed (no pull-out couches or futons). A dishwasher and washer/dryer are preferred.
We also establish a general range we are willing to spend to help narrow down the search. One other key consideration is the subjective “Does it look comfortable?” You are going be spending a good amount of time there, so make sure there are places to sit that are more padded than a wrought iron chair, picnic bench, wooden bar stool, seemingly 40-year-old couch, artwork disguised as a chair, or your bed. Everything else about the place is nice to have for us.
Most people I talk with assume that Airbnb is our default and only option for finding places to stay. While we are happy to leverage Airbnb, it is far from the only source for slow travel housing. Here are some of the sources we go back to time and again when looking for an abode.
The two large on-line vacation rental sites have a huge number of property listings, and that makes searching easy. Many property owners list their properties on both sites, and the sites are encouraging property owners to provide discounts of 10-50%+ for longer term stays, particularly in the off and shoulder seasons.
We tend to avoid other on-line vacation rental sites like Flipkey since they that typically don’t offer long stay discounts. Their service fees tend to be higher than Airbnb or VRBO too. There are also vacation rental site aggregators like Hometogo.com or Trippy.com that search across applications and provide vacation rentals options from varying vendors. This is great if you have a specific area and/or type of accommodation you are trying find, such as 6 Bedroom house in Denver. For our needs, we prefer searching directly on Airbnb and VRBO’s sites to ensure we can see all their property inventory.
Furnished Finder caters primarily to traveling nurses and other medical professionals needing temporary furnished housing. Stays average about 3 months in length, and many properties have minimum stays ranging from one to three months.
There is no requirement for you be a medical professional to use Furnished Finder. Their service differs from sites like Airbnb in that you contract directly with the host, and Furnished Finder does not charge a “service fee”. There can be additional costs involved, such as providing a refundable deposit. Virtually all properties include WIFI and utilities. Most listed properties are in mid to large cities.
A great option in popular vacation destinations such as Destin, FL and Lake Tahoe, and for big cities such New York and Buenos Aires is local vacation rental agencies. These companies have extensive inventory and often provide discounts for 1 month or longer stays, particularly in the off season.
Using local realty agencies requires more research time than other options, as you need to identify the companies and review their offerings one agency website at a time. However, local agencies typically offer a better variety of properties at better rates than the large on-line rental sites (As with most things, you pay for convenience.) Virtually all the properties have WIFI, and utilities are included. We have found some of our best value properties using the local vacation rental companies, so it’s worth your time to do the research.
Another option is a short-term rental from a conventional apartment / property management organization. You can search for these furnished apartments on aggregation sites such as Apartments.com, Zillow, and Trulia.
These property managers have traditionally focused on the 6 – 12 lease market. However, there are increasing numbers of furnished rentals for 1-to-3-month rentals available, particularly via Trulia. You can find some excellent properties on these sites, especially in more metropolitan areas. However, because these are conventional property managers, you are stuck with more typical apartment rental requirements that you don’t face with vacation rentals such as:
If you are only staying one month, it may not be worth the effort. Hopefully, we will start seeing more streamlined processes as these companies pursue more of this intermediate-term market.
Pet or house sitting is a totally different proposition. This is a great solution for pet lovers but requires specific responsibilities. Go to our Pet Sitting section to learn more.
As the number of remote workers rise and interest in slow travel increases, the market for intermediate-length stays of 1 to 3 months is expanding. No longer is this market limited to snowbirds and corporate road warriors, and property owners have noticed. More and more “long stay” discounts are available, which means there are more excellent deals for slow travelers. The key is you have to be spend some time understanding what you really want in a temporary home and conducting a treasure hunt to see what’s available. Dream big, make a game of the research, and you’ll be amazed at some of the beautiful places you could stay.
If you have additional ideas on how to find great long stays, we would love to hear about them.
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