Recently, I headed to New York, and I needed a place to stay cheap and fast. I didn’t want to fool with a hostel again. Not, so much because I’m against staying in hostels. Good night of sleep and room to iron was important for the job interview. There aren’t many flat surfaces in a hostel that New Zealanders aren’t having sex on at any given moment.
So I did what I always do and shook the Internet until something fell out. On a tip from the Matador Network (a good one not something on saving money by staying in a chicken coop or harnessing the power of New Zealand hostel orgies to smite whalers), I found out about a site where I can find apartments to stay in.
It was near Times Square and was conveniently close to the interview. I knew from the site that the owner was going to be out of town that week. I scaled the elevator shaft with my grapple and tried the lock against my picks.
Inside I was greeted by an enthusiastic young man who was playing the piano and handed me a set of keys. In my dsylexia I had read the website as AirBNE dot com not AIRBNB dot com as in Bed and Breakfast. I was not in fact buying information on houses to break into, but renting the room for three days. A much easier arrangement.
I mentioned this to a friend, and it was this point she fixated on about my whole trip. (That and whether or not I used the Ninja bathroom. I wasn’t aware that was a thing, but it is.) It struck some kind of OCD nerve. So I thought maybe some of her concerns about AirBNB are shared by others. So I’ll address some of them here:
Do you have to hang out with the people?
No, you don’t. We talked to our host one night over a box of Magnolia’s cupcakes, but that was pretty much it. He took another lodger on a tour of the garment district though.
Did you get to use the rest of the apartment?
Yeah, all the common rooms including the kitchen. Now, mind you our bed room was private. On AirBNB there are four categories: couch, shared room, private, and even whole homes. Hell, while going through the top 40 properties one of the whole home was a castle. A fekkin’ castle.
Isn’t this basically Couch Surfer?
Except I can actually get a whole room. It’s review based like Ebay or Couch Surfer, and AirBNB handles all the cash. However, the addresses are public on AirBNB so you know, murderers tend to not list their address. (Not that Couch Surfer is filled with murderers). Also the public address lets you know the area your staying in before hand.
You can get a $20 dollar discount on a rental the first time you list a property on AirBNB. You can play this card only once per listing, but also like CoachSurfer you reserve the right to accept or reject any reservations.There is a motivation on either side to participate.
And how wast it?
I’ve tried it once now and got to rent a nice room in a trendy apartment in Times Square for the quarter of the price of a hotel there. It was surprising quiet and pretty large. The host was genial and fun. There was a problem with the facet in the shower, but that’s pretty standard issue in apartments.
I had a good experience, but really I’m sure it varies from place to place. So give it a try yourself.
