How do we solve housing for digital nomads?

Hi Awesome Nomads!

I hope to help solve this problem for digital nomads that are pet lovers!

I’m the Founder of Pet Digs - a new pet sitting and travel web app. Pet sitters stay in a place for free in exchange for looking after a pet!

We just launched in the San Fransisco Bay Area and aim to expand to other cities soon! Currently sitters need to be US residents or citizens but would like to open it up to international travelers next year. Membership is also free while we are in Beta.

Please let me know if you would be interested in joining our community or would like more information. We hope to make travel more affordable and easy for digital nomads and keep pets comfortable in their homes.

Thanks!
Sara

This thread is great! There’s certainly a large scope of folks with differing needs, from just taking an AirBnB for shorter stays, to spending longer and looking for better value rentals. I myself fall a bit further along the scale still. I like to spend long enough somewhere to get into its ecosystem, and I like to go back again to see both the changes and some familiar faces! Not so much nomadic, but having many homes…

So whilst I agree there’s no major problems if you spend less time and just use AirBnB, I know the problems of going somewhere for a few months or more and finding good flatmates, as opposed being entirely independent. Camps and coworkations can solve part of this (except they’re ad-hoc and ephemeral), so might permanent places like Coconat (from the sound of things).

As I feel like I’m getting older (relative to having been nomadic my whole life ), I’m liking the idea of ownership, having a ‘base’. (Partly discussed <9>.) This seems increasingly valuable, but simultaneously I don’t want to end up tethered. I actually bought myself an apartment, but the tether is too great. This may seem unresolvable…

But now I’m playing around with a model which fits somewhere between the typically free but culturally ‘alternative’ nomadbases, and onerously high-commitment housing cooperatives. I’ll post here once I’ve fleshed it out a bit more, but suffice to say I’ll be buying a place to try the model next year. (I’ve previously experimented with a large leased house in Delhi for four years.)

I would love to hear from anyone else interested in the idea of ‘fractional’† cooperative ownership and establishing a network of ‘affordable’ locations one could move amongst, either full-time, or as part of further nomadism… To give some idea of ownership-costs, for use of one month per year I’m looking at targeting €4,000 (lifetime acquisition), plus running costs of €250 (annual); so about €525/month if amortised over 15 years. This means full-time could be under €50k.

I should add that whilst ownership within a cooperative is my goal, participation without ownership commitment would also be possible (i.e. ad-hoc renting). Some have mentioned in this thread that in such a shared-house scenario diversity would be important — the model will definitely address that!

†I don’t like the word ‘fractional’ for its connotations but I can’t think of a better way to concisely describe it at present.

Hey all! I’m working on a project that might help with some of these questions. If anyone would be willing to answer some questions, that would be great. the survey takes about 2.5 minutes: https://mandy58.typeform.com/to/byJ2xc

thanks!!

I’ve thought of something like but it’s just really, really hard to scale. I’m not sure what the solution is yet to be honest. Also, agents usually don’t work with listings that are very cheap because they work on commission only and there’s such high turnover in that industry. The old, traditional real estate/rental industry is at odds with the needs of digital nomads and we are a microcosm of the market at the moment.

Hi, I’m new.

Renting for 9 months but living only during the first and the last 3 months would effectively give you 1.5x local price (you pay for 9 months, use 6). I plan to try this “sandwich” renting in about a month or so in Novi Sad. Even if I can’t sublet the middle 3 months (“hole” or “meat”?) it still looks like a good deal.

@levelsio how about house swaps, would that be a possibility? I know not many have a permanent flat or so, but for example, I’m in cape Town, currently renting a one-bedroom flat and would love to spend some time in Europe but can’t afford any accommodation. Happy to swap my flat for the time I’m away with another nomad. That way, we both understand how to respect each other’s flat to make it a more sustainable option for future. Thoughts?

Your project sounds awesome. I hope you will do it.

What do you think about add your space on nomadhouse.io?

Hey guys! Dropping in late on the conversation. Currently in Paris but living in San Francisco, originally Lebanese … You get the jist I sifted through the 50+ comments and wanted to add the community aspect. If anybody’s part of Thousand Network or the TED network, it’s so good to land in a city and know there are people passionate about the same things as you.

It’s partly what attracted me to thecaravanserai.co. Pieter, you mentioned Bruno in your intial comment. I met him a while ago and decided to help out. Anyone who wants to help find amazing locations, I think the caravan’s being pretty generous with a $12k reward Obsvly, help is more than welcome!

From a philosophical perspective, “housing” or “home” became synonymous with people at one point and Bruno’s project melds people and “physical” home so… Now it feels that carvanserai ‘is’ home

The main issues to address are

• Housing where landlords are already aware that people are nomads or otherwise work from home, don’t physically leave and go to a job and otherwise can pay rent and earn without even leaving the house

• Internet already set up, no one who is a nomad should have to sign up for something or 2 year contracts etc on their own. Again going back to landlords who have to know that internet is really important and things like the router easily accessible if it’s an old POS that we have to physically go and reboot a lot. No internet = no money should be understood and it being completely unacceptable for the landlord/mgmt to be away a week or similar before internet issues can be fixed.

I dealt with this a LOT in Toronto which was by far the hardest supposedly first world city I’ve ever tried to rent in. Even other Canadians had trouble with slumlords often insisting on a year’s rent+ upfront and taking advantage of foreigners and new immigrants who otherwise didn’t have a choice. I met other Canadian founders who told me horrible stories, one in particular was married to a doctor and the local landlords still insisted that she showed 4 years worth of tax returns to prove that she was actually a doctor. I dealt with substandard bullshit and ended up moving 4 times unplanned in 2 years wasting about 6-8 months in total and blew through a lot of time I was paying for via my own funding unnecessarily

Nomad housing should have these problems pre-solved so that people can essentially show up, dump their stuff, go straight to work and enjoying their new surroundings, meeting new people etc.

I don’t really consider myself part of the digital nomad community, but I travel around and work on personal projects so I fall into many of the same slots as you guys.

Here’s a comment I posted about my ideal housing situation on HN a little while back:

I’ve been thinking lately of where I would like to live for most of my late twenties and early thirties. I’m definitely a bit of a loner, but at the same time, I like living as part of a close-knit community. I wish I could find a little ‘tribe’ of self-directed folks roughly my age in an old, creaky house somewhere in the mountains… or on a remote island… or in a forest, or something. Just people working on their projects, tending to their garden, raising some chickens (or maybe some kids), enjoying the fresh air, and mostly living away from the rest of society. An art commune for the 21st century, I guess.

(snip)

In terms of the politics, I lived in a student cooperative in college, which I think was a pretty good model. Money went into a central pool to pay for various things, and all decisions (including membership) were made democratically, in house meetings. Everybody was responsible for part of the chores (determined at the beginning of the year) and people could also run to be elected for managerial positions (workshift, social, kitchen, etc.) Of course, as with any organization, there were occasional conflicts, poor meeting attendance, etc. But our house didn’t fall apart and it was a life-changing experience for many of us.

In addition to the above, one other critical aspect would be for the house to have some degree of diversity. For me, this would mean a 50-50 gender split (I’ve found the social atmosphere in such communities, both online and offline, to be much more pleasant and interesting; the cooperative house mentioned earlier had a somewhat rigidly enforced gender balance and it worked out well) and a population comprised of more than just programmers, web designers, and bloggers. (How about some painters and writers? Academic researchers? Self-driven people of all kinds would be welcome.)

In terms of location, I’d prefer a small, peaceful community that’s close to nature but nonetheless within a few hours of a major city. Right now I’m in the Côte d’Azur and one of those beautiful hillside villages would be ideal for me. Paris is only a few hours away, after all.

(This is, of course, in addition to all the basics that people have already mentioned, such as good internet and desk space.)

I see a lot of ideas for temporary house shares or house swaps in this thread, but I wonder if anybody is looking for a more permanent residence?

(To be clear, I don’t really see this as a business opportunity. I wouldn’t want to live in a house that operates as a for-profit business, especially if it’s funded by VC capital. The organizing body should probably operate as a cooperative business, with everything owned by the members and all profits going back into the house. As an example, the Cheese Board Collective in Berkeley has operated successfully under this model for many years.)

(More on topic, for the time being, I’ve had great luck with Airbnb flatshares for shorter stays and country-specific subletting websites for longer ones. But it never feels like home.)

The outline of this thread was to discuss problems/services geared towards addressing problems that nomads face when acquiring housing. There are a wide spectrum of nomads, from ones working on a shoestring through to those who have lots of disposable income. Each has their own unique set of circumstances. Trying to suggest that there are no housing problems is disingenuous.

Some nomads are in a position of living on a shoestring budget. Their problems are a “money problem” as Peter suggests. Others have the flexibility of a better budget and it becomes more than a money problem. It becomes a time problem. How does one quickly find a reliable place to stay at a reasonable price that offers amenities that cater to nomad needs? If you’ve got more money than time how do you find housing that satisfies your needs (quiet, a desk, accessible, reliable + fast internet) etc.

I would have loved a NomadList.io kind of site for each destination outlining a list of reasonable places and amenities. Something allowing me to quickly narrow down places that met my needs and matches my budget that are recommended by other nomads.

Great point. It’s exactly what I tell people to do when they get in to Salvador (Brazil):

• Book a hostel or hotel for a week or two.
• Walk around some neighborhoods that seem nice and you’ll see signs advertising rooms for rent.
• And/or go to a meetup (expats, entrepreneurs, church, people involved in some sport or activity you enjoy) to meet locals and other folks who have lived there for a while. Ask them about neighborhoods and heck, sometimes people there have a spare room / apartment available or know someone who does.

Many of the inexpensive rentals have no web presence, perhaps because the owner is not computer-savvy, or perhaps because they don’t need one; they manage to get tenants offline.

Other possibilities:

• Areas around universities may have inexpensive apartments due to the student population
• Have a local friend who speaks the language check the newspaper classifieds and get in touch with the landlord/owner on your behalf

Searching on foot can be the best value, but on foot - costs time, and if your time is worth money, spending days on foot to save $50 - $100/ month is probably not the best investment of your time

This seems to be something that happens a lot – and then the same person is perfectly happy to drop $$$ on the latest Apple device or travel gear
It’s become a competition to find the lowest rent without thinking about the other costs.

“But, I’ve been doing this for over 20 years. Been to over 30 countries. It has never been easier to find housing.”

I’ve been doing this for about 2 and only really started to experience the unknown roaming through SE Asia in the last 6 months. I can tell you that in my experience finding housing has been a tremendous drain of time and energy that I would rather have dedicated to building my company.

“Here in Hoch Minh City, it is quite easy to drop in, stay for a week and live like a local. I’ve seen it take an hour for some people to get set up with housing.”

Sounds simple if you know where to look. I “dropped in” to Ho Chi Minh back in late Nov and I can tell you it was no picnic. My wife and I had no idea where to go so we ended up in backpacker central in District 1 where everything was noisy and overpriced. It took us a lot of time to get our bearings (days, not an hour), know where to go and pop into various places inquiring in order to find a reasonable place. All the while we had to figure out transport, stayed in unsuitable places with unreliable internet and spent too much.

I would certainly agree that Nomad Housing support tools wouldn’t be a billion dollar idea but I would readily throw up my hand to say I sure as hell would have used and benefited from such tools over the last 6 months as well as specific listings of nomad friendly places.

What I found is that AirBNB is terribly overpriced in most of SE Asia (compared to hotels.com and bookings.com as well as hitting the ground asking) and finding a reliable place to live and work from at a reasonable price point takes far too much effort. I’d bet there is a modest niche market there dealing with the nomad community making things easier.

Housing is a non-problem for me. I’ve got Airbnb bookings for the rest of the year all over the world. The only thing I’d like to change about that is that the Airbnb fees are quite steep for long term stays, there should be some kind of membership that effectively puts an upper limit on fees for the year.

Hi! I am new to this forum, but I also had the vision of having a network of amazing places where one could stay some time (1-6 months) in different places in the world, sharing with creative people, not only entrepreneurs but also designers, artists, techies, etc. I have a large apartment in Barcelona (http://www.makerboat.com/myportfolio/barcelona-startup-house/) that I am sharing thru Airbnb for the lack of other alternatives, and a house in the mountains of Peru where anyone is welcome to stay for free (http://www.makerboat.com/myportfolio/colca-free-camp/) and I will soon have a boat docked in the center of Barcelona for free stays too. My motivation is more about meeting interesting people and collaborating than about making money out of renting, although I understand that is a viable model for many. I would like to know what you guys have in mind and join any efforts in building this network of nomad houses.
best,
Mauricio

I’m very skeptical of this idea.

True, there are nomad houses popping up here and there, but I fail to see the critical mass (now), and way to achieve scale, which would make it feasible to address - this said problem.

Also, I’m in the camp that it’s not that much of a problem, yet.

Airbnb, Craigslist, forums, on the ground, FB groups, the list goes on.

I don’t see nomads who put in any effort have that much of a problem connecting. I see it as more of a cash problem.

Even that, the nature of the problem is dependent on the market and inventory.

Here in Hoch Minh City, it is quite easy to drop in, stay for a week and live like a local. I’ve seen it take an hour for some people to get set up with housing.

Back in New York, yeah - sure, you can do that. If you have a lot of money, and I don’t see that fact changing.

On Airbnb, I was an early adopter.

I remember being booked for SXSWi and using it to find cheap accommodations in Austin, due to the fact hotel prices were insane then.

It was a great value then.

Same when I would return to visit NYC.

Great value in the early days.

In some markets it’s still a good value, but I think that’s shrinking.

In fact though, I try to avoid Airbnb in some markets and go as local as possible.

The Airbnb market has now adjusted in a large portion of their markets. The hosts have caught on, Airbnb is now an entire “business” for many people, and Airbnb has a big incentive to get prices to a mean, which are right there below hotels.

Almost, not quite.

As far as CouchSurfing.

It’s a different culture, and I don’t see people taking on the financial risk of a nomad house, and not wanting to maximize the profit.

Why would you?

As a host of a house, it can get costly, tiring and - why would you not want to maximize your investment of time and return on a platform like Airbnb, which has scale.

The proposition doesn’t make financial sense to me.

If you really want to do something about - housing for nomads, I would think in terms of going after progressive hoteliers, regional hotel chains in key hubs.

Create a massive nomadic housing blueprint you license to them.

I would create an end to end customer journey map based on the nomadic experience, housing and leveraging their properties. Give them a specific blueprint on amenities, pricing, work centers, food, fitness, entertainment and “living like a local”.

Work with them on the implementation plan - and observe end to end, by mapping every single obvious trigger. Internet login (fucking pain) - sort it. Workspace (fucking pain) - sort it, etc.

These hoteliers are scared shitless of Airbnb, yet they do not even have the means to evaluate the nature of the threat in their analyses of markets and competition. It’s a horizontal market attacking them. Incumbents suck ass at evaluating and responding to horizontal threats.

Give them the antidote.

Airbnb is the “local experience”.

Further, they see the writing on the wall, but have no idea how to address the threat. The “business customer” that pays the bills is changing. As the J O B continues to die, and independent nomadic people take on the roll of the new middle class (mobile) - current hotels offerings are sorely out of date for the mode and impetus of nomadic travel, which will surely grow, but isn’t quite there yet.

With a partner approach, at least you have the potential to launch with scale versus having a house or a platform, which will lack inventory.

I suggest to consider workaway. It is very good way to stay with local families and help them with some of their work. The idea is that you help them up to a max. of 5 hours per day and in return you receive free accomodation and food. The rest of the day you can usually do what you want. Many hosts offer free internet service and therefore it is ideal for digital nomads.

I have done it for three months in Costa Rica in various locations. One was next to the largest national park. I was working there as a receptionist in a small local hostel and could even use the interenet while was on duty. Just a perfect arrangemtment for me. But i also worked on an organic farm in the mountains and at a finca close to the beach.

You can sign up as a workawayer at http://www.workaway.info.

There is a ton of things we can still do to solve this problem. Right now I am almost finishing a journey around South America and this week I am pre-launching a new venture that focuses on booking nomad accommodation. Happening from Cochabamba, Bolivia

I plan to offer accommodation through a platform that will only list apartments, houses, or rooms that are well-prepared to allow a digital nomad to work from day one. This means, book your stay, jump on a plane, and once you arrive only worry about your work. Every service you like will be close by: cafes, co-work spaces, gyms or fitness centers, even laundries. Also, I aim to connect nomads between them throughout the platform so they can pin-point new places around, rate them, maybe even get exclusive deals ! @levelsio has already done an uber fantastic work with connecting people so we can only make it better and bigger.

We can also work together with companies so we push the remote work idea further than ever. Imagine companies seamlessly booking the stay for your next 6 months contract anywhere you like in the world, just like you book a hotel ! Without bothering about anything else other than you to comfortably live and work from day one. I just want to make it unbelievably easy for anybody to move around the world, knowing that upon arrival they have a nomad-perfect place to live and work, with all the amenities that nomads need or require.

If this sounds good to you and want to bring your 2 cents, please guys subscribe already on nomadstays.co (as nomads or hosts :P). There is a tiny form to fill so I will know better in which countries do I have to concentrate efforts to find apartments that fit the best our nomad criteria.

Each nomad member could rent long term (1-3 years) in a place he likes and then switch with —or sublease to— other members.

Personally, I’d love to see more opportunities to go in together with other nomads for housing (which could bring the prices down significantly). The only “nomad house” type situations I’ve seen where people are living and working together usually have way more amenities than I need (or am willing to pay for) and I never see them in Europe (where I spend most of my time). I’d love to see a nomad retreat that didn’t include all meals + yoga + group sessions of one sort or another. Would just like to have the creative space to work in with other nomads around.

I also (and this is a unique situation, I know) travel with my dog, so for me the only things I can be part of are the ones willing to accept her too.

We are working on cross of hostels,co-working spaces in exotic places of India.
Our only concern is size of market, can anyone help us in estimating market size?

We might be able to test out the concept in Zagreb if there were enough people interested. One of my co-founders (an American guy) lives there and heads up our engineering team.

So, what would people need? Should the living space and the working space be separate or together? It’s much easier to do it separately but in the same building, for example, the working space on the ground floor and the living space upstairs. Do people want their own apartment, or shared apartment but own room? Or shared rooms?

The nice thing about Zagreb is that it’s in the European Union so you can order from Amazon etc., and it’s easy to travel from there to other parts of Europe (lots of air service elsewhere). It’s generally a very civilized place, you can drink the tap water, things are well organized, there are fun things to do, beautiful nature nearby and Croatian people are friendly. You can buy anything you need there, both Carrefour and Interspar are available. English is widely spoken and is generally excellent. However, Croatia is a lot less expensive than western Europe.

The main hang-up is visas. What period of time would people be willing to commit to? People from the EU (or holding EU residence cards) can stay in Croatia indefinitely, but people from other countries can only stay for 90 days without applying for a Croatian visa. Staying beyond a year is generally not possible.

Did you know Marriott doesn’t own a single hotel? They’re just a management company. They set standards to which properties using their brand must adhere and are paid franchise fees by anyone using their brand.

There is a similar opportunity in this space for the right entrepreneur. The proof of concept is a single property. Ideally, a nomad house for startups will be a cross between a really nice hostel, a co-working space and a hackerspace.

Honestly, for what incubators are spending on office space in the US, they could provide a live/work space in many places around the world and their investment would go much farther toward building an MVP. I don’t see why more incubators aren’t interested in branching out, since a fully immersive experience would likely be more valuable during the product building phase anyway.

Hot topic!

Right now I live in the coliving house Art House Medellin with other fellow online entrepreneus in Medellin, Colombia.
In August my girlfriend and me, we are a nomdic couple, stayed on Canary Island Coliving Camp The Surf Office.
There are more exciting projects like Nest in Copenhagen…
These spaces are full with like minded nomads and have services like cooks, cleaning and activities on demand.

On Coliving.org you find a map and manifest about that concept.

We started to seek for coliving communities rather than styaing in hostels or apartments…

Have any nomads used the a16z startup teleport.org ? It’s still early and in mostly early-access. Thanks!

I would like something that was broken up by calendar months.

It would behave something like this…

• I choose August 2015
• I’m added to a group that’s looking to group-rent a house for that month
• There would be subgroups for which country I’m interested in
• In the subgroups people would vote on Airbnb listings, hotels, etc.
• We could commit with escrow somehow until it tipped

Tbh I don’t really have a burning desire to house share with other nomads. I do have a huge need to know which are the nomad-friendly hotels in a given a city (i.e. affordable on a weekly or monthly basis, clean, have good wifi).

A votable list of hotels or recommended airbnbs would be huge - and would answer 90% of the questions that get posted to the Chiang Mai Facebook group. Icing on the cake would be a mini-forum for each city, so I could meet people who are there currently. That’s where the coordination could happen. my 2 cents

I think I’m with @levelsio here (sorry Pieter :))

The MVP for this is simply around coordination. You want to know who else wants to stay in city X for 1 month. Once you 5 people found each other, you just agree upon on Airbnb and share it for the month. Activities, communities, incubator, skill exchange are all nice addons, but IMO not critical. As @darren said, the rest will come by itself. The most important thing is critical mass.

@atu and I have a plan to start this the simplest way possible. We both have opportunities to do the first experiment with such arrangement, because we are both moving cities soon (him to Chiang Mai and me to Austin, TX). What we’re going to do is find a suitable monthly rental on airbnb, with a month block available (Austin in particular has some awesome designy places that accommodate up to 6) and we’ll post here to dates and details and find people open to joining the experiment. The hope is there are enough people on here in Austin looking for a place to live that month. I feel like Chiang Mai will have much more people who fit that scenario. We are researching these potential ‘Nomad Houses’ ‘Nomad Homes’ ‘Nomes?’ And will post here when we find them. Would appreciate everyone’s help to spread the listing to everyone they know who might be in that location, because we would want to fully fill the place before either of us book it through airbnb. The fun part will be to document the experience, and create another in person interaction for this community. From there, I hope to move every month and find new Nomes, allowing the proceeding ones to be seeded with new guests. Really excited to make it happen with you awesome guys and gals!

Yeah to me it’s less about the housing itself, and more about the people you have the possibility of sharing with.

If these X people are arriving in Z location at time Y, how can they be introduced and coordinate together in the quickest and easiest way possible. Build this, Peter!!!

Everything else will fall out of this… Housing, working, travel and partying. It’s about connecting similar minded people at the right time. Each of your nomad sites do a job well, but they are not working in union, yet.

I would love coordinated work around approaches like these http://www.hackerparadise.org/

Basically places where nomads can live and work and play together

What I would love is this:

For each location on NomadList, users can submit “Amenities”. There could be different categories of Amenities - Hotels, AirBnbs, Coffee Shops, Gyms, Coworking spaces, and so on.

Users could submit an amenity, along with a comment. Then other users could vote up the amenity, or vote it down, and add comments.

So then there would be curated lists of these amenities for each location, with the best amenities rising to the top.

I also had this idea about bringing people together in terms of having different skillset in the same house.

@nomadicpad Can we discuss about that, I have lot of ideas and I would love to partner on something.

Normally just a hotel, if month+ i get a serviced apartment. I had a condo contract for 1 year in Bangkok and no way I will have such a long contract again.
Don’t really see any problem about housing.

At workfrom.co they are building a list of coworking places.
This is also relevant, and can be integrated to the product.

So, an aggregator of alle available resources with a curated layer on top is what I am thinking of.

I’ve been thinking about the same thing! There’s lots of considerations, one being that the supply side (reasonable monthly rentals) are hard to come by. That’s the problem due to Airbnb’s popularity and the inflated expectation of fees hosts have been charging.

I think something needs to be created inbetween an airbnb and couchsurfing. Where it’s a paid service, but not so capitalist. Having it be a network of nomads would allow the hosts to benefit from bringing people into their apartment, connections are formed, and the idea of keeping the month price at a reasonable level becomes more realistic. Would love to chat more about it. I bought the name Nomadicpad.com, but am not so experienced at UX and building the platform, but would love to partner up anyway possible!

The MVP style would be a curated list of places that have reliable internet and a space that can be used as a work desk, from Airbnb, Booking, whatever.

We could all recommend our favourite Airbnbs. They used to have an affiliate program and apparently are planning to bring it back, so you might want to talk to them and see if they can hook you up.

I have started doing this on a wishlist, but obviously it takes time to grow as these are places I go to and stay for a while. Feel free to pick those up if they are useful.

https://www.airbnb.com/wishlists/17914860