Hacker News Reader

Comment by jdrc | Hacker News Reader

or you can up-bundle airbnb. I would like to be able to pick "2 years in <nice place>" as a package that includes everything from home to food/gym/car etc

View on HN

I tried this via Airbnb in Spain and ended up moving from place to place instead. I never actually found a location where I could work properly, to the extent that I rented a separate office some of the time. Patchy internet almost always, cheap furniture, base level electricity that would trip out if you had two appliances running at the same time, and #1 problem NOISE all of the time.

I'm not sure that Airbnb is the actual problem here, for me it was the host's expectation that people will just throw money at them whilst all they have to do is provide the location. The one half-decent place I stayed was, ironically, the only option without a hundred or so glowing reviews.

Alternatives to Airbnb exist for every niche and, in my opinion, you generally have a good idea of what you are going to get from the outset rather than with Airbnb where it is always a gamble - regardless of how much money you are willing to spend.

In Spain you need to make sure they have fiber, and not some satellite internet (surprisingly common). Other than that, yes, noise is a huge problem for us foreigners in Spain. Most landlors opt for the smallest kWh electricity contract as electricity is one of the most expensive in Europe.

Problem is, the neighbours of airbnbs are often airbnbs themselves, so you get a stream of incoming people who don't care about noise.

There is a couple of very nice coliving+coworking spaces in Spain in case you would like to try this experience again.

My favorite are Sun & Co (https://sun-and-co.com/) and Sende (https://www.sende.co/)

I've never had a good Airbnb experience. There is simply no incentive for hosts to provide good accomodations. On the flip side, hotels that cost as much as typical Airbnbs provide a drastically better experience. After paying a fortune for yet another lousy Airbnb a couple weeks ago my wife and I agreed we'd never use Airbnb again.

I prefer hotels or apart hotels too.

I've never had a perfect-five-star Airbnb experience either, but all my reviews have been very positive.

Airbnb guests and hosts need to get good reviews so there is an incentive to give better than real reviews in both ways.

One of the best ways to read reviews is looking for what reviews don't mention. Like no reviews mentioning the place is quiet or clean or having comfortable beds.

I would say I've had better experiences at Airbnbs attended by the property owner (like people who rent their extra room), than those attended by a co host or a subletting company. These are easier to find in non touristic destinations.

There's those that "game" the pictures so it looks nice and colorful, but have bad quality furniture and cheap dollar store everything. Those are better to avoid

And I think the reason is that AirBnB hosts have no incentive to improve anything. Because there's always another sucker. Who cares if city41 never stays again or if city41 tells everyone never to stay at Bob's AirBnB in Paradise, Nevada. Bob doesn't give a shit.

Bob only needs to convince one person to stay at a time. That's it. And then it's relatively easy money. Especially considering that while the lodger is staying, you don't have to do hardly anything. You spend a couple of hours cleaning up after they leave, and that's it.

Hotels need to convince everyone to stay. True, while they can eat the cost of one or two lodgers, they can't become known as a place with bad lodging. Hotels have operating costs in the millions. They have staff, they're turning over rooms daily, cleaning every room daily, industrial HVAC, a bar, a restaurant (or two), sometimes a tiny convenience store, concierge services.

Hotels are invested in you having an acceptable stay.

Not going to lie, when travelling, I tend to gravitate towards national chains for lodging. While I'll never find the true wonders of the whatever of living like a local or what people claim AirBnB provides, I'll never have a truly shitty lodging experience either. It's one of the areas where I'm not looking to have an adventure.

I tested this concept with smarthubs.club (digital nomads living and traveling around the world with everything included). We started in Spain, and used 4 stars hotels to standarize the experience. Although it worked during the pandemic, hotels are now reluctant to change their business models, and they will not accept the required conditions to make the business model viable and expand the concept to other hotels/cities

Hotels suck anyway. I can't imagine why anyone would want to pass through a reception and a bunch of corridors just to arrive "home", at a small room with bad furniture, and it isn't even cheap.

It might make sense if you just need a place to crash after a long day of traveling, but it's not a way to live.

I don't visit foreign cities to 'live'. That's for the locals -- they're the ones who deserve to be able to live in the towns they work in, not be driven out because of AirBnB.

> I can't imagine why anyone would want to pass through a reception and a bunch of corridors just to arrive "home", at a small room with bad furniture, and it isn't even cheap.

You just described living in a major city. Thats my life in my apartment in <Major West Coast City>.

That might describe SF. Or student dorms. Most cities I've been to aren't like that.

Any apartment building has corridors and halls to get to apartments. Any expensive city has small apartments. Any high-end apartment (or big complex in a city) has a doorman/front desk.

What were the conditions hotels didn't want to accept?

Good idea for people working for 2 years abroad for a job opportunity. It might be part of the package and the employer offloads it to your company. Imagine how productive your exec hire will be without having to deal with all that.

I imagine it coming with a concierge app so you can add or remove stuff and the push of a button.

I'd pay good money for this. A year long "staycation" sounds amazing.

You mean real estate agent?

Never rent through a real estate agent. You're at a disadvantage, they're too good at screwing tenants.

Look at it objectively: two people have to be able to make a profit off of you in this arrangement (the owner and their realtor) and both of those margins will be pretty fat since neither of them is a long-term employee of the other, like you'd see in an apartment complex with an on-site manager.

Real estate agents are always on the landowner's side. Just accept this and the whole system will make more sense (this goes for buying or selling a house too).

This has not been my experience as a renter and as an owner. The realtor's margins for renting are quite low, which means they try to make things as smooth as possible for everyone, to minimize their work: in particular, they try to get the house/apartment rented as soon as possible, to make as few visits as possible; the also have an interest in the tenant staying the longest time possible. As always, I guess it depends on your real estate agent, though!

Yes, according to my experience the owners who actually care and will solve any issues are not using real estate agents. Only those who want to be 'hands off' do. It usually ends up not being a great experience for everyone involved.

My experience is that the owners not usings agents are the cheap ones that will cause trouble for everything and not pay up for renovations and things breaking down. Hands off owners are the best as they just let the agent handle things professionally instead of trying to save a buck by calling illegal workers to half fix everything, then steal your deposit because things are broken when you leave. I have not met any of those magical owner that fixes everything correctly and would go the extra mile and I actually wonder what would be their inventive to do so, when simply having an agent take care of everything would save their time.

I (hope) I’m like this. Im not handy at all, and have a tenant. When a problem arises for them, I just call the appropriate person (plumber, handyman, etc..) to come fix it. It’s the same thing I do when a problem arises in my own house. Problems don’t tend to come up too often, maybe once every few months, so I don’t see why I need to pay someone to handle this stuff for me.

I'm going to go for personal assistant in this case.

that s not what real estate agents do here. but it might work with some kind of "local agents" that arrange all things for you before and after , making the moving easy and seamless. there are relocation experts in many major cities, they all have differnt websites and all. someone should unite them under a gig platform (this was actually an idea for a website i made some time ago)

There’s sabbatical homes[1] which does that. Say someone lives abroad for a year, and doesn’t want to go through all the hassle of moving out all of the furniture or parking their car in a safe place for an entire year just to rent it for that time. And the same for the person who’ll be renting, they might be in a similar position, just reversed.

[1] https://www.sabbaticalhomes.com/

Those things are a pain to sort out in the short term, but irrelevant in the scale of 2 years, or even 6 months. Which is probably why it's not a thing.

There are a few companies doing this. The most established one is probably Remote Year.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com