How To Find Housing Overseas Without Using Airbnb

Introduction: Welcome to Badass Digital Nomads, where we're pushing the boundaries of remote work and travel, all while staying grounded with a little bit of old school philosophy, self-development, and business advice from our guests.

Kristin:    00:00:24    Well, hello there, Kristin, from Traveling with Kristin here, and welcome to episode 127 of Badass Digital Nomads. It's just me again, I wanted to do another solo cast this week, and today we're talking about housing because I have been loving all of your questions and comments and video and podcast suggestions lately, and I wanna answer as many as possible for you. And so I decided to just drop into your earbuds again today with some actionable travel and living abroad advice. Housing is actually a really fun topic. I think it's probably the favorite part of the relocation process for my clients because who doesn't like picking out a cool place that you're going to live in another country? So in today's episode, I am going to give you 27 ways to find housing abroad that does not involve Airbnb <laugh>. Okay? We're gonna get a little bit more creative, and I hope that some of these, or most of them, are strategies that you've never used before and are new to you.  

Kristin:    00:01:40    And so we're gonna get into that in just a second. Just wanted to give you a little bit of news today that I am in Los Angeles this week speaking at the Vid Summit YouTube conference, where I might be doing an in-person meetup around October 1st. So for details on that, make sure to join my weekly email list. I send out a travel newsletter every Friday. You can get it by going to travelingwithKristin.com/subscribe. So sometimes I have travel tips, sometimes I'm sharing personal stuff there, and sometimes I'm making announcements like new courses, programs, and in this case and in person meetup. So if you're not on my email list, go over there. I will keep your email safe, I promise, no spam allowed. But you can also keep your eyes peeled over in the Badass Digital Nomads Facebook group and on YouTube if you go to youtube.com/TravelingwithKristin and click on the community tab at the top of the videos.  

Kristin:    00:02:50    I usually do at least a weekly post on that community page. So that is another way to keep in touch and keep on top of any happenings. This is also the last week to apply for my new eight-week relocation coaching program before 2022. So if you're planning on moving abroad soon, but you don't know where to start, you feel overwhelmed by all of the information out there. Or maybe you've already spent too many years of your life thinking about or researching how to move overseas, but you haven't made the leap yet. So you just wanna get some guidance and support and accountability and inspiration from yours truly, as well as my practical step-by-step process for relocating or slow traveling to another country. Then you can apply to join us at travelingwithkristin.com/apply. That is Kristin with an I, my friends, K R I S T I N.  

Kristin:    00:03:54    And you can also send an email to my relocation company at info@orbisrelocation.com, O R B, like Belgium, I like Iceland, S like Spain, relocation.com with the subject line Ready to Relocate and I will respond. You can also use the link in the podcast show notes to apply directly. And since the program will be starting next week, I have a lot of interviews on deck for you here on the podcast. I'm really excited to share those with you. And then we'll have some more solo casts again soon. We like to mix it up here, some solo episodes, some interviews, best of both worlds. And if you have a topic that you would like me to talk about or a question that you would like me to answer on the show, you can request a podcast or a video by sending me a message at badassdigitalnomads.com or by filling out our Google request form in the show notes.  

Kristin:    00:05:01    And if you haven't been to our website, there's lots of other cool stuff on there. You can, uh, check out our Badass Digital Nomads store, leave a review, make a donation, buy me a coffee, connect with me on all of the social media platforms, <laugh> that is over at badassdigitalnomads.com. And little known fact, you can also search for any episodes you might have missed. You can search by topic or keyword. There's even like a free search bar where you can search for anything you want and see which episodes come up that are related to that. So you can search interviews, solo casts, travel tips, mental health, loneliness, anything you want, and there's gotta be something there. <laugh> with 127 episodes to date. Anyway, without further ado, here are 27 ways to find housing abroad that aren't Airbnb. Let's do this before starting your search. I do think it's good to use Airbnb as some inspiration and also to look at comp.  

Kristin:    00:06:09    So go ahead, log into Airbnb. You can use my link in the show notes for $30 off your first trip if you haven't used Airbnb before. And you can search by Flexible Dates, location. Um, you can just kind of see what comes up there and that way you can see what the Airbnb average prices are for, what you're looking for for your dates, and then write that down because you're gonna use that later when you're comparing them to the other sites and strategies on this list. So make sure you have a pen and paper or that you're taking notes in your favorite notes app on your phone or on your computer because there are a lot of strategies here. And I will go ahead and drop a link in the show notes to download a list of these strategies if you want to have a copy on your computer as well.  

Kristin:    00:07:00    These are in no particular order, and this is not an exhaustive list, but the first site on my list today is the Plum Guide, which offers exceptionally curated homes according to their website. I originally found the Plum Guide when looking for rentals for a client that was moving to London, but they have properties in a lot of different places. Just looking at their website right now, they have places in Los Angeles, San Diego, New York, Charleston, Paris, Joshua Tree, and this is not the cheapest option, but these are usually really nice luxury high-end properties. Just looking at a few of the examples, it's not the most expensive, but it's also not the cheapest. So you could end up getting a really nice apartment or home or flat for the same price as a hotel. I'm seeing prices from $135 per night in Lisbon, $154 per night in Barcelona.  

Kristin:    00:08:07    And then you can really go big for five, $600 a night in Sicily and everything in between. I'm seeing around $90 per night in Rome. Plum Guide is good for short term or monthly housing. It's not so good for long term if you're going for six months or one year, but it's a good option for that short to medium range. Rental Plum Guide is like the HGTV for vacation rental properties, if that sums it up. The second tip on my list is to search for executive rentals or serviced apartments in the place that you're going to. So these used to be fully furnished rentals that were to be used for business rentals back in the pre covid days, but now you can use them as a digital nomad or expat or slow, mad slow traveling around. They are great for monthly rentals and because they were originally designed for business travelers, they are usually in really good areas, close to amenities and also with really fast internet.  

Kristin:    00:09:13    So to find executive rentals, you can just use Google to search executive rentals or serviced apartments plus the city or neighborhood that you're looking for. So one example that I really like that has locations worldwide is called Corporate Stays, but you can use this strategy to find places anywhere around the world, like I just found a website I've never even seen before called Convido.com, and they have serviced apartments in Manila, in the Philippines and also in Melbourne, Australia. And I'll link to all of these sources in the show notes, or you can download the guide as well. So Corporate Stays has properties, they started in Canada, so it's throughout Canada, Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary, but also around the world. These are fully equipped, fully furnished apartments. They have listings in China, Hong Kong, Morocco, Egypt, Greece, Ireland, Italy, The UAE, South Korea, Turkey, Switzerland, Spain all over the place, especially throughout Central and South America as well.  

Kristin:    00:10:29    My third strategy is to make Google your friend. So not only do you wanna search for those executive rentals or service departments, but you can search for short-term or long-term rentals, plus the location that you're going to even down to the city or neighborhood or street. So if you find some really great properties in an area on Airbnb, check out the map on Airbnb, find out what those streets are or what those neighborhoods are, and either go to Google Maps and then search for short-term rentals or long-term rentals actually in Google Maps or on Google itself. And you're gonna come up with a lot of local rental agencies. This is gonna take a little bit more time because you gotta then contact those agencies yourself, but a lot of times they have a mix of properties that they manage directly and also a rolodex of other clients and hosts that are renting throughout that city.  

Kristin:    00:11:32    And you can sometimes even get lower prices than you would find on Airbnb. My fourth tip is to go through local real estate agents. So there's a website called Point2Homes that I used to use when I was a realtor in Costa Rica. And again, I'll link to everything in the show notes, but you can go to Point2Homes and then select your location around the world for where you went to find rentals. So this is basically an MLS system for real estate and rentals around the world. And you can find rentals yourself. You don't have to be a realtor to be able to use this site, although real estate companies and brokers typically have accounts on this site and this is where they're uploading and managing their listings. So instead of just searching for the real estate and rental agencies themselves, you can go to Point2Homes, find properties you like, and then see who represents them.  

Kristin:    00:12:32    My fifth tip is to use local classified sites. I love this one because you can find such great deals this way, although in my 65 travel tips video people were commenting to be careful of course when using classified sites because anytime you're booking off of a booking website, there is some risk of a scam. So you always wanna make sure you're not sending cash or wiring money or sending Western Union to people that you've never met and you haven't seen the property in person. So you just need to take some extra care when using this strategy. But you can find some really great deals. You can use Craigslist of course, but then you can also find local classifieds in each place. So I have some examples here for you. So one that I've used in the Netherlands for example, is called Kamernet with a K, but there's some version of a local classifieds in almost every country around the world.  

Kristin:    00:13:30    You have Kijiji in Canada, Maltapark in Malta, Vivanuncios in Mexico. So search for classified rentals plus the country, but also try changing it into the local language. So if you just search classifieds in Mexico or Mexico City, it might start coming up with results from your US or other location. So you wanna search like Clasificada something in Spanish so that it's coming up that way, or use a VPN to search from Mexico City. My sixth tip is to use expat rental sites. You have a macro option here and a micro option. So the macro option would be an international global expat site like justlanded.com where you can search for expat friendly rental properties, usually fully furnished, almost anywhere in the world. But then there are also typically local expat groups or websites or agencies that also have locally sourced rentals.  

Kristin:    00:14:43    So one example is only expats in Amsterdam and that URL is onlyexpats.nl. So what you can do is search on Google for expat rentals plus the city or country that you're looking for. My seventh tip is to use sublet.com. This is a little known site, but it has a lot of properties around the world. So that's just sublet.com. You can search for short-term, long-term, a certain number of months furnished unfurnished, and you can get a lot of really cheap properties. And sometimes I see the same properties on the site that I see on the bigger vacation rental sites or Airbnb, but I see them for less or for a lower price because they have lower listing fees for number eight. Another website that I really like is called Nest Pick. And according to them, they are the largest platform for furnished apartments.  

Kristin:    00:15:48    They are a free search engine and they work with more than 200 partners to provide you with the biggest selection of mid to long-term furnished apartments for rent on the internet in over 3000 cities in the world. So that's pretty big. And they basically pull in results from other sites. And there's a couple sites that do this, but they pull in results from different websites and I'm gonna give those to you in just a minute. Ninth is another website that I used to use a lot, especially in Europe and it's called Housing Anywhere. So you can rent rooms or apartments and you can stay on a monthly basis. Some of their biggest cities are Berlin, Rotterdam, Brussels, and Vienna. And I actually came across this site when I was looking for housing for a client in Budapest. 10th, we have a site called Flatio, which is owned by fellow digital nomads, and it is a place for you to rent fully furnished flats really easily and at lower midterm rates than some of the other property rental sites.  

Kristin:    00:16:58    So this is based in Portugal, so there are a lot of listings around Portugal, but also around Europe. So this is flatio.com, and there are some really great local prices on here, some great deals starting at just a few hundred euro per month. I'm looking at a whole apartment in Bratislava for 409 euro for the month. There's also a flat for rent in Budapest for 514 euro per month, and sometimes you can get a property on this site, a whole apartment for the same price as just renting a room on Airbnb. 11th. I have one of the biggest sites, which is Vrbo, V R B O, which also acquired HomeAway or they merged or something like that. This is one of the older vacation rental sites, and it's not the cheapest, but they have a massive selection. And it's also really good for renting a bigger house or a villa.  

Kristin:    00:18:03    They have a lot of luxury properties on there. So if you're traveling with a group or you have kids and pets and you need a really big place, I like Vrbo for that. 12th is a website called 9flats.com that I found quite a few properties on in the past, especially throughout Europe. They bill themselves as being the alternative to the hotel. With over 6 million accommodations worldwide, it's a place to feel at home, away from home, and that's pretty much what we're looking for as expats in digital nomads. We wanna get out there and see the world, but we also want to feel at home. They have some pretty cool destinations including Havana, Cuba, the Canary Islands, the Hague, and the the Netherlands, and then all of your big cities like London, Berlin, Rome, Milan, but also a lot of islands from Sicily and Sardinia to Bali, Mallorca, Malta, and Cyprus.  

Kristin:    00:19:07    In 13th, I have the conglomerate site Tripping.com Now this is a really similar website to Nest Pick. They both kind of build themselves as being the biggest vacation rental site in the world, but on tripping.com, it pulls in results from the other sites like vrbo, like Airbnb, like Home2Go. And so that is one to go to to just get a lay of the land and understand what's available in the location that you're interested in and kind of see the different price ranges in comps before you commit to something. 14th is the travel booking website, Trivago. So this is a site you might have heard of before or maybe you used it to book a hotel or a car rental, but few people know that they also have long-term rentals on there. It's kind of a mix of everything. Right now I'm just looking at a one-month rental in Bangkok, Thailand, and I'm finding everything from $16 per night hostel to $24 per night service apartments to $900 per night at the Mandarin Oriental.  

Kristin:    00:20:21    So this is another big site where you can find a lot of really random deals that you might not see anywhere else. 15th is this thing called The Inspirato Pass that I haven't tried out personally, but I keep getting ads for it on my Instagram. Maybe some of you have seen it as well, but it is basically a luxury travel subscription membership. So for $2,500 per month, you can join and you can access their curated rental properties around the world. That is a pretty good deal, especially if you're going to be going to expensive places where your Airbnb can easily reach two or $3,000 per month so that most of their locations are in the United States. They have 95 cities in the US but they also have some international destinations as well right now in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Cartagena, Columbia, and also throughout Costa Rica and Mexico.  

Kristin:    00:21:25    So if you're going to be staying in the Americas, definitely check out inspirato.com. 16th is co-living, so if you've never tried co-living before, it's really fun. I have a lot of videos on YouTube about co-living, so you can just search for that on YouTube, co-living, Traveling with Kristin and see what comes up. But there are two big sites where you can check availability. One is Cowoli, C O W O L I, and on their page it says, unique shared spaces to live and work for Digital Nomads. So these are all different because it's all around the world, so you're gonna find different price ranges, different levels of accommodations, luxury and amenities, but you can find some really cool stuff on there and meet new people at the same time. I also like Kndrd.io, which was founded by my friend Christine McDannell. That's KNDRD.io.  

Kristin:    00:22:28    And this is a site where co-living operators can list their properties so that you can find them. So I just did a quick search in Germany and I found 10 plus options around the country. So definitely check out co-living. You can even save some money on your rental that way. On a similar note, in 17th here, I put retreat groups. So this is where you can get your housing adventure and community all in one. So these are travel tribes like Remote Year, Hacker Paradise and WiFi Tribe. And in some cases you can pay for a one-month stay or longer with one of these remote work retreat groups, and it could end up being the same price as renting your own place on a site like Airbnb. My 18th strategy is using Facebook. So you can use groups or the marketplace to find housing anywhere in the world.  

Kristin:    00:23:29    And when you're posting in groups, there's a lot of different strategies. You can either join an actual housing and accommodations and rental group in the city that you're going to, you can also join an expat or digital nomad group in that city and post in there and ask around. And this is how I found my <laugh> famous, uh, 150 euro per month apartment in Bulgaria because my friend Johnny FD posted in the Bansko Facebook group and found a local realtor and we ended up getting that property for a fraction of the price of Airbnbs in the same city. And so I think his apartment was maybe, maybe he paid the same amount. I think we each paid between like 150 and 200 euro to stay in the same building has might've been more because I think it was two bedrooms and mine was one bedroom.  

Kristin:    00:24:27    But I mean, thanks Johnny for finding that because it was, you know, 200 euro per month instead of 800 euro per month. So the Facebook group strategy, it's definitely more time intensive and you can get a lot of dead ends, but you can also get a lot of really good deals and rent directly from the owners of these properties. You just wanna be really careful and make sure you have a way to vet that person or the property before you send them money. In 19th, I have TripAdvisor. So Tripadvisor, they have been around a long time, but a lot of people don't know how many vacation rentals and long-term rental property websites that TripAdvisor owns. I don't even know how many they have, but FlipKey is one HouseTrip is one, and they also acquired holidaylettings.com. And I have used all of those websites to find monthly rentals for my clients in the past and for myself.  

Kristin:    00:25:28    So also check those out. My 20th tip is to use hotel websites like Booking.com and Agoda. So these are other sites that people mostly think about when they're going to book a hotel or hostel, but there are also monthly rentals on there. This is not the cheapest way to find rentals, but you could find some availability that you haven't seen anywhere else. And it's also reliable websites that have been around a really long time and so they are secure and they have guarantees. My 21st tip is to hit the pavement. So this would be to use physical for rent signs. That means you want to rent a short-term property, either a hotel or a vacation rental for the first few days or week or in some cases even a month depending on how long you're gonna stay in that country. Get a short-term rental, pay a little bit of a premium, and then go walk around, bike around, take a moped, rent a car, go around and look for four rent signs in the windows or in front of buildings.  

Kristin:    00:26:42    This is definitely a more time intensive strategy, but it can really pay off. And when you're doing this, make sure to translate for rent into the local language. So that's say "Sel alguila" in Spanish or "Te Hurr" and Dutch and in other languages like maybe Serbian and Bulgarian or Russian, it might even be in a different alphabet. So make sure you know what does for rent look like and then go look for signs that have that on it. So using this strategy, some of my friends have found properties in Chiang Mai, Thailand, for example, for a hundred or $200 per month, just you see a sign in a window, you call or text the number you knock on the door and it's usually by a local and walla  you've got yourself a local rental and you've saved hundreds if not thousands of dollars per month. But that's not so practical if you are working remotely full-time or you're only staying in a place for one month, this is for if you're gonna be living there for like six months or a year and you have the time to invest in finding a local rental that's gonna pay off when you compare it to your hourly rate.  

Kristin:    00:28:00    If you are a freelancer or online business owner, you wanna know what is your time worth and then is it worth it for you to go and do this? But if you have the time, then it's a great strategy. This is also a way that I have built my database of rental properties, realtors, rental agencies over the past 10 years by calling lots of numbers as I was traveling through these countries. But hey, I'm a relocation manager, so that was my job. Number 22 I have for you home exchange websites. So this could be HomeExchange.com or LoveHomeSwap.com. Those are two of the big ones, but there are quite a few of them. If you Google just home exchange websites. So if you own your home but you don't want to sublet it, you don't want to sell it and you still want to travel, this is a really good option for you and you can end up staying in some pretty amazing properties around the world.  

Kristin:    00:29:01    23. Another really cool website is TrustedHousesitters.com. So you can use house sitting as a strategy to find a rental around the world. And this might take a bit more time and energy, especially if you're going to be pet sitting as well as house sitting. But you can end up staying for free, maybe taking care of someone's dog or cat or bird or snake or even their horses and uh, livestock. You never know. There's lots of interesting options on there. But uh, check out TrustedHousesitters.com. I have a friend who did that for seven or eight years of traveling around the world and she loved it and saved a ton of money. But you've gotta be flexible if you're using that site. 24 is RV rental sites. So you could just go and rent a van or rent an RV wherever you're going.  

Kristin:    00:29:59    You don't necessarily have to stay in a house or an apartment. And of course on Airbnb and some of these sites, you can rent cabins, you can rent boats, you can rent an igloo, like you can rent all sorts of things on different rentals websites, but you can also go directly to RV rental sites like indiecampers.com and you can rent an RV and be mobile and more nomadic at the same time. So that's something that I plan to do someday and if that appeals to you, go check it out. 25 is to consider camping. Hipcamp is a really cool site where you can find campgrounds all around the world and this is a really great budget travel hack. Now, you might not have some of the nicer amenities that you would in a luxury rental, but if you're in a place like let's say Estonia and it's in the summer and it's good weather and you have a sim card with 5G access or you have a hotspot and you can work from anywhere in case the campground wifi isn't so good, then try finding your rental property through a camping website instead of a housing website.  

Kristin:    00:31:18    For number 26, I have budget websites. So these are things like Couchsurfing.com, Hostelworld or volunteer sites like Workaway or WOOFF. So again, these are budget sites, so not the most luxurious, but this is a really good way to travel around the world on a shoestring budget, meet some really interesting people and just save a lot of money. So if you're gonna be using one of these budget sites though, you definitely wanna consider if you're going to be working remotely, where can you work? Is there a good workspace in the place that you're going to be staying where you'll be able to focus on your work? Or is there a coworking space nearby that is affordable where you can go a few days per week? But um, budget websites can be another way of finding good housing. And my 27th tip is more for if you are looking for housing around the US and Canada and to look for specific websites for domestic travel.  

Kristin:    00:32:24    Hello Landing is a really good one for the US and of course there is Zillow and some of those other big rentals websites. And one that I've used a lot in Canada is pad Mapper because it brings in properties from a lot of different websites. Craigslist included lots of classified sites, but their m.o is quote, making apartment hunting suck less end quote. And so I think that's something we can all get on board with. As I mentioned, this is not an exhaustive list, but I hope that these 27 strategies have gotten your creative juices flowing and have given you some ideas for other ways to find housing that's not Airbnb. But Airbnb is still good as well. And for a lot more of my behind the scenes strategies of every aspect of the relocation process, make sure to apply for my new Ready to relocate program at travelingwithKristin.com/apply. Thanks for listening today. Come visit us at badassdigitalnomads.com and see you again next week.