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.
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.