Good evening YouTube! I'm actually in rural Missouri right now visiting my
mother. It's a beautiful out here! But the reason I'm making this video is
because I'm moving to New York City next month -- and I've really been struggling
trying to find a place to live -- trying to figure out what neighborhood I want to
live in. I lived in New York last summer for a couple months but I didn't
really get to explore it very much. So, I've been having a really hard time
trying to figure that out and it hit me that maybe I should just stay in Airbnbs
for a while. So that's actually why I'm making this video -- that's my plan -- For 365
days I'm gonna stay in an Airbnb in New York City, moving about every 30
to 60 days. So why stay and Airbnbs? There's so many great neighborhoods in
New York City like I said before, and I couldn't really figure out which one I
wanted to live in. So I didn't want to lock myself into a 12-month lease and
this just seemed like a great way to experience a bunch of different
neighborhoods and decide where I eventually want to live. So reason number
two is I'm really the kind of person that enjoys a change of scenery. I was in
the military for 20-years and got to move around a lot and I really missed
that. So this will give me the opportunity to move around to different
places and change my scenery. Reason number three, I plan on traveling
full-time someday in the near future and this is a great way for me to learn the
ins and outs of Airbnb and whether or not I want to use that when I transition
to traveling full time. And also, how to get the best value out of Airbnb.
So, what about the cost? Anyone who's ever rented a place in Manhattan knows
there's a lot of costs above and beyond the monthly rental price. Usually there's
a 10 to 15% broker fee that you have to pay which is calculated based on the
annual rent amount. So it actually comes out to a to a pretty substantial amount
of money, plus security deposit. I know I get that back but I'd also have to buy
furniture and a few other things. So when I calculated all the costs, there really
wasn't much difference between staying in an Airbnb and renting a place
long-term, to be completely honest with you. Also, one thing I figured out about
Airbnb is that when you stay over 28 days, you get a monthly rate and so that kind
of offsets the cost a little bit and you can also negotiate with
the owner of the property. The first place I'm
staying at in Manhattan is in Hell's Kitchen and I'm gonna stay there for 60
days. I just sent a message to the owner of the property and said "hey I'm
staying 60 days, can you give me a discount," and she did! So that's another
way to bring the cost down of using Airbnb. Lastly, Airbnb includes all
utilities so I won't have to worry about an electric bill, a cable bill, and
Internet bill or anything like that. So I'll save money there as well. Actually
there's one more thing about the cost - I have a Chase Sapphire Reserve
card which gives 3x points for Airbnb so that'll also help offset the
cost a little bit. Another question I got from my family was what about your mail.
What I did was, I got a mailbox with UPS. You pay a monthly rate or
a yearly rate and you get a mailbox that actually has a number. It's very similar
to a PO Box but you get a street
address and a box number so it
looks like an apartment number. I changed all my bills to that address with no
problem. The only issue I had was, when I tried to change my brokerage account.
So that's what I'm gonna do about my mail. I'll be writing blog posts about this
experience on my website which I'll link below, as well as making videos sharing
this experience.....this 365 day Airbnb challenge in New York City. So thanks for watching.