It’s been almost 6 years since I sold everything I owned and started living in Airbnbs. Every year my thoughts, revelations and strategies for being a full-time nomad seem to change, so I like to record them here for posterity and in case they can help anyone else take full advantage of the awesome-ness that is long term Airbnb stays. So let’s get into it!
I’ve written a lot of posts about my Airbnb experiences and things I’ve noticed, such as how I find great stays or how I’m now a lot better at instantly falling asleep in a new place, but in case you want all of that info, it’s here:
- How I Choose Great Airbnb Stays: A Peek Inside A Full-Time Nomad‘s Travel Planner
- Lessons Learned After 4 Years Of Living In Airbnbs
- Lessons Learned After 3 Years Of Airbnb Nomad Life
- Lessons Learned After 2 Years Of Airbnb Nomad Life
- Lessons Learned After 1 Year Of Airbnb Nomad Life
- What’s It Like Living In A Monthly Airbnb?
The main tip that I still always use from those posts is to take advantage of Airbnb’s weekly (7+ day) and monthly (28+ day) discounts, which can be substantial. Our record this year was the automatic 55% monthly discount from our Airbnb in Bath, England๐ฌ๐ง. These discounts are built into the Airbnb website. I’ve never personally asked a host for a discount or anything like that.
As I’ve mentioned before, I have strict criteria for all of my Airbnbs and I think this is one of the reasons that I’ve never had a bad stay (*knock on wood*). Here is a list of my Airbnb criteria:
- Superhost
- Rating of 4.75+ over 50+ reviews
- Free cancellation
- 1+ bedroom
- $2,472/month total on average
- Note: I increase this each year with inflation
- Our own space (aka no shared apartments)
- Walkable to city center and grocery store
- Full kitchen with microwave
- In-unit washer/dryer
- Fast Wi-fi
- AC/heat
And in the last year I’ve lived in Airbnbs in these locations:
USA๐บ๐ธ
International
- Tokyo, Japan๐ฏ๐ต
- Osaka, Japan๐ฏ๐ต
- Auckland, New Zealand๐ณ๐ฟ
- Lima, Perรบ๐ต๐ช
- London, England๐ฌ๐ง
- Liverpool, England๐ด๓ ง๓ ข๓ ฅ๓ ฎ๓ ง๓ ฟ
- Edinburgh, Scotland๐ด๓ ง๓ ข๓ ณ๓ ฃ๓ ด๓ ฟ
- Bath, England๐ฌ๐ง
- Iceland๐ฎ๐ธ
- La Paz, Mรฉxico๐ฒ๐ฝ
- Mรฉxico City, Mรฉxico๐ฒ๐ฝ
A Lesson Recap
This will be the 5th post of this kind on my blog so I thought it might be helpful to do a quick rundown of the tips I shared in previous posts that are still relevant today.
Check-In Is Flexible: I’m such a rule follower that it didn’t even occur to me that something like an Airbnb check-in time could be flexible – though luckily I asked ๐ . At times our flight or train gets in hours before our Airbnb check-in time and when that happens, I message the host in advance and politely ask if we could check in early. Almost always they say yes, and if they say no, it’s with the option to drop off our luggage before check in time so we can explore the city without a heavy burden until the actual check in time.
You Can Change Your Reservation: I didn’t know this until about halfway through our first year of Airbnb living, but you can change any reservation you make without consequence like an airline change fee. The change has to be approved by the host, but the many times we’ve changed reservations, all have been accepted almost immediately. You can change the dates or number of days easily on the app. However, learn from my mistake and check the current cost of the Airbnb before you submit a date change. I didn’t do this with our 2022 Thailand Airbnb. We submitted a request to decrease the number of days we were there and we were charged $75 as a result ๐ . The Airbnb had increased in price since we booked it, so making that change altered our whole reservation to the new price and despite staying less time, we paid more money. We would have been better off just leaving the reservation as is. Whoops! Lesson learned.
Extra Days: I love incorporating overlap days into my Airbnb plans. For example, we had an evening flight out of New Zealand, so I just booked an extra night in our Airbnb and for an additional $30 per person, and we got to leave our Airbnb whenever we wanted to instead of leaving at 10am and finding a place to chill with our bags for hours before a combined 17 hours of flights. Beyond worth it ๐ .
Cushion Days: Generally in retirement, it’s not a big deal if I have a travel delay because I usually stay places for a month or more. However, my trip to Iceland was the first time I’d planned daily travel and moving Airbnbs every day. And our flight was delayed a whole 24 hours. I usually have a chill day or two planned at the beginning of a trip for that very possibility, but IcelandAir’s max stopover is 7 days and I didn’t want to waste one sitting around instead of seeing that gorgeous country. However, I’ve now learned my lesson ๐ .
Bring Your Soap Internationally: Since we set sail on this Airbnb adventure, I used to always bring a travel size bottle of hair products and body wash to every Airbnb we’ve lived in, but I never needed it…until we got to Thailand. In Thailand, our Airbnb didn’t have any of that. It was the first time I used the products that I traveled with. I had assumed that no Airbnbs would have hair products for example, but that was proven wrong until our first international trip post-pandemic.
Homey Items: I’m still bringing around small items that bring me comfort on the road and surprisingly, that helped me feel “at home” no matter where I was. My biggest homey item used to be my Bombas Gripper Slippers, but after those got holes in them, my Partner bought me the new Bombas Sherpa-Lined Slippers for Christmas and I’m in love! My ankles have never been so comfy.
Googling Instruction Manuals: After all these years of figuring out how to use different appliances often in different languages with Google Translate, I have discovered a foolproof way to not break a washing machine in another country: Google it! Shocking, I know ๐ .
Sous Vide to Oven: Since we’ve been to so many international locations that have different outlets than the US, we have found that even with an adapter, they don’t work with US-based heat producing items, such as sous vide machines, hair dryers and heating pads. We lent our sous vide machine to our family while we went international in 2024 and as a result, started baking our protein instead of sous videing it all the time. I hadn’t thought about this option beforehand, but it’s been a great way to make the same dishes when our sous vide doesn’t work.
International Electricity: We’ve found in Thailand and Mexico that electricity is billed separately from the Airbnb rental cost and is based on usage. I imagine this is only a thing in countries with hot climates and high electric costs, which include those two. However, I wanted to point it out because this was never a thing in any US Airbnb we’ve stayed in.
Things I Don’t Need: There are several amenities and objects I had assumed I would need while living in Airbnbs – it turns out that I was wrong about many of them ๐ .
- A Dishwasher: Similarly, I thought we would need a dishwasher in all our Airbnbs because they were key to me keeping sane while working in Seattle. However, it turns out that with my unlimited free time, I don’t mind doing dishes and we have also gone entire month stays without using the dishwasher at all so I don’t find them necessary anymore
- A TV: We have stayed in Airbnbs for more than a month and never turned on the TV. I thought I would watch a lot more movies and TV in retirement than beforehand, but that hasn’t been the case. I’m too busy with other things ๐
- A Chromecast: We began our nomad journey by traveling with a Chromecast, but then discovered that all of our Airbnbs already had one (or an equivalent) and that we basically never used it since we also basically never turned on the TV ๐
Things I Do Need: These are items I was curious if I would use as much as I thought and I did! So I always add the first two to my Airbnb filters when looking for a new stay:
- A Microwave
- An In Unit Washer/Dryer
From “Living” To “Staying” In Airbnbs
From mid-2020 to mid-2025 I lived exclusively in Airbnbs. I didn’t have a homebase and I was a full-time nomad. All of that time was documented in detail in my weekly and then monthly retirement recaps if you’re interested in that.
But now my life is a little different. In May 2025 my Partner and I signed a lease for an apartment in NY State. So instead of living in Airbnbs, I ‘only’ stayed in them for 50% of the time while having our apartment in 2025. Here are a few things I’ve learned while staying in Airbnbs the last year.
- I Got A Homebase! (But Will Still Travel 1/3 Of The Year)
- I Became A NY Resident (Again): Real ID, Voting, Libraries, Healthcare and Taxes
Lesson #1: Cancellations Are Increasing
It seems like Airbnb cancellations by hosts are increasing based on my anecdotal experience. We have had 2 hosts cancel our reservations this year, which is a bit wild.
London
For the first time in 5 years, my Airbnb reservation was cancelled by the host – and of course it happened the first time I was booking a place for us to share with another couple. This has only previously happened once at the beginning of nomad life when our host in Portland, Maine asked us to cancel because they were going to let a family member who had fallen on hard times stay in their apartment longterm instead.
So we happily cancelled and found other accommodations. However, the cancellation that happened this year was nothing like that – we didn’t get a note from the host explaining what was going on or anything of the sort. Instead I got an email from Airbnb saying that our stay in London during summer high season had been cancelled and we were being given…an $84 rebooking credit.
That is absolutely laughable. The email did provide other Airbnb options, but they were not very good and didn’t align with all the criteria the one we previously booked had, such as air conditioning during the hot summer months. So I did my own search and was able to apply my previous payment and that $84 credit to an apartment with similar stats (2 bedroom, AC, washer, kitchen, superhost, guest favorite, high reviews etc) and it was actually a little bit cheaper than the last one and much closer to downtown – because I’m awesome ๐ .
Airbnb’s OG email had in smaller print to contact them if I wanted a refund instead and then a few days later they messaged on the Airbnb app asking if I was good or wanted a refund. Alrighty then – that’s cool, but definitely don’t hide that in the fine print next time.
Colorado Springs
Then a few days later a house we had booked in Colorado Springs cancelled. We messaged the host and asked for an explanation and it turns out that Colorado Springs is no longer allowed to have short term rentals in residential areas. The host apologized and we were able to find another similar stay, but I found two cancellations in the span of a few days after years of never having this happen interesting.
Going Forward
So all that to say, now more than ever, I’m making sure to have several backup plans in place and multiple Airbnbs that I would be happy to stay in just in case cancellations continue to increase. I also try to be flexible with our plans in case things change.
Lesson #2: Fees Now Included In The US
I’ve mentioned before that I use the Australian Airbnb Website (https://www.airbnb.com.au/) when I search for new Airbnbs. This is because unlike the US, they include all fees and taxes in the total cost they show for each listing.
By contrast, the US didn’t include any of that, so I was often in the situation where I found a reasonable listing, went to book it and the cost would almost double with all the fees and taxes added on. Woof! So I use the Australian website because their Airbnb website is more customer friendly than the US.
I was surprised to see that in April 2025, the US Airbnb website started including all fees in the price listed. It still doesn’t include the taxes, but that is a step in the right direction towards cost transparency…though my pessimism assumes that this change is the result of Airbnb losing a lawsuit or something ๐ , but I’ll take it.
Conclusion
And that’s what I learned in my 5th year of staying in Airbnbs! A lot changed in this last year and I’m no longer an Airbnb nomad, but I did still spend a large portion of the year living in them – enough that I learned new lessons that I wanted to share with y’all ๐ .
I continue to lean more towards convenience and comfort than saving a dollar, which is so far from how I acted when I started this FIRE journey that’s it’s wild. I’m proud of myself ๐ . Cheers to another year of exploring our world!