Category: home

Airbnb Journey: The Alexandria VA Duplex

After spending a month in North Carolina, my boyfriend and I needed to return to the DC area due to appointments and family events coming up. The search for a place in the DMV as we natives call it (DC/Maryland/Virginia area) that fit our requirements as well as our budget was quite difficult. The area can be pretty expensive, and we wanted to make sure we were within a good distance to our appointment locations.

After extensive searching, we booked a duplex in Alexandria, Virginia. Alexandria is a large city in Northern Virginia that borders the nation’s capital. Like most places, the neighborhoods can range from older and more established to new and recently developed.

As soon as we hit the reserve button, we immediately second guessed our decision. It was a new listing, but the owners had several reviews for other properties. So we weren’t concerned about them as hosts, but we realized we didn’t know much about the actual neighborhood, and we also realized we had not seen any pictures of the outside of the house. After our NC bungalow, the visual bar for our homes was set pretty high.

So of course, as soon as we received the address, we immediately did a google map search of the property. And that did not help our concerns. But what’s done is done, we had paid our money, and that would be our home for a month… unless we wanted to cancel and lose our money. Ummm no.

Unlike the first home, the check-in for the Alexandria duplex did not go smoothly. With it being a newly listed property, the owners were working on final touches in the home up until and beyond our check-in time. Our check-in time was delayed so we had to pass the time, which was hard to do when we were still in the midst of pandemic lock-down and stores are limiting entry. But fast forward a couple hours, and we checked into the home.

The home was located in a well-established aka older neighborhood as we suspected, and visually, the home was not as attractive as the NC bungalow. Once inside, the furniture was older, and there were some areas of the home that weren’t completely finished (ie., blue tape on the walls, a chandelier that the owner had to come back and finish hanging, dust that they probably would have swiffered if they had a little extra time, etc.). But…there was a homely charm about the home and I was determined to make the best of it.

THE NOT SO GREAT:

I really gave the owners the benefit of the doubt–sometimes first rentings just don’t go as planned. I know they wanted to have a guidebook prepared, and I’m sure they wanted the space to be Airbnb perfect. Unfortunately it didn’t happen that way, and by the time we arrived and were able to check in, we just wanted to get unpacked and settled. The moment for the cute arrival had passed, and it just wasn’t going to happen.

Some of the things that made the stay less than perfect included the home not having central heating, so with it being the middle of winter, it was quite drafty sometimes. There wasn’t a ton of space for our clothes, so it felt like we were always shuffling things around just to get things from our luggage. There was only one bathroom, and after having two, it was difficult to adjust to one…though we did it, and it was fine. There was only one television in the house and that wasn’t ideal.

THE GOOD:

There were a lot of great things about the home and the location. We were able to see family and friends since we were close to home, so that was really nice. We were able to both have cars so that helped with getting to our appointments and such with no coordination efforts. We took walks quite a bit even though it was snowing a lot of the time, so we were able to get out of the house and get fresh air. The home had a dedicated workspace and multiple rooms to spread out, which we cannot say about some of the other places we’ve stayed. The home had a lot of kitchen amenities so I cooked quite a bit, which was really nice. I also stocked up on my craft supplies and started teaching myself ceramics, and there was enough space to spread out and craft. The home had this really cute loft area, so we liked escaping to that space to think or just have some alone time. It was also perfect when we had meetings and needed personal space for those. The home had some really cool decorative elements and pictures that I thought made such a nice touch. The neighborhood was so quiet, so we slept like babies. And speaking of sleep, the bedding was so comfortable, I had to message the host to ask about the sheets and pillow cases, and I ordered my own!

AT THE END OF THE DAY we were looking for peace, safety, and a space to work, and this home provided just that. We have been out of that home for about six months and I still have moments that I flash back or miss something about it. It really was a unique and cozy vibe, and sometimes you don’t find that in “perfect” homes, or homes that are staged immaculately. Though it wasn’t the prettiest house on the prettiest street, the hosts were awesome, the space was quiet, the home was safe, and I would absolutely stay there again.

Here are some of the cute decorative touches that I really feel made the space unique and cute.

What if something makes a bad first impression for you? How good are you at finding the good in situations? I felt like a month was a long time to not love the space we chose, so I really focused on what I loved about the home. And it turns out, this home actually had a lot to love!

justamarylandgirl2 Comments

Airbnb life: OMG my host cancelled my reservation at the last minute!

I. AM. STUNNED.!!!

Let me start off by saying, this post is not going to provide a lot of advice about what you should do if this should happen to you, because truthfully, I am still working out all of the details of the situation and I do not quite have the answers. This post is really me just venting, and letting you know about things that can happen when you are living life on the road.

So…here’s what happened.

LESS THAN 24 HOURS before I was set to check in to a home for a month, my boyfriend received a message from the host of the home. The message was for an alteration to the dates that we were to stay. Instead of checking in the next day and staying for a month stay, the host asked if we would accept his offer to check in TWO WEEKS FROM NOW for a two week stay, FOR $300 MORE than our month reservation!?!?!

WHAT. THE. ENTIRE. EFF!?!?!

A shorter stay for more money, and we can’t even check in on the day we NEED to check in!!??

Uhhh…no thank you!!

When the text came in, we were packing up and winding down at the home we were in, and making plans for our departure the next morning. But we had to change gears IMMEDIATELY and figure out 1) how do we get a refund and 2) where the eff are we gonna go in the morning????

My first thought was to see if we could stay put for a few more days. However staying at the home we were in at the time was not an option because another guest has already booked it.

We really did not have a lot of time to play around with and we needed to know what our options were IMMEDIATELY. Of course, in the day of on-line support and help bots, getting a human on the phone that could help was not the easiest thing to do. So my boyfriend worked on contacting airbnb and I got to work researching places we could check into the next day.

Though I don’t have any official advice for resolving these types of situations, here is what I did learn from the situation.

1) TRUST MY GUT – When we initially found this place, in our guts, we felt like something was off. The place didn’t have a TON of pics, but we felt like it was enough to make us feel comfortable with selecting it. The host also had kind of a distorted profile picture, which just kinda made us wonder why versus made us feel like it was a deal breaker. There weren’t any reviews, but hey, every home has to start with its first renter. And we had rented homes in the past that had little to no reviews because you get good deals as one of the first three renters for most homes. So that didn’t scare us off, but rather just made us prepare ourselves for a less-than-perfect stay. But here’s what made us question things a bit. Once our reservation was confirmed and we received the address, we googled it and realized it was an apartment versus a condo, so renting from a renter is really what made us apprehensive. I was actually surprised that this was permitted by airbnb but apparently it’s a new thing they started allowing. We feel like home owners and companies that use airbnb income as a primary income source have more to lose if our stay isn’t good or if they don’t live up to their end of the deal. Someone renting an apartment may not have the same type of personal or professional investment in the experience.

2) DO NOT CANCEL – Even once the host made it clear that his home would not be available for our stay, and even though we needed to release this reservation in order to make another reservation, we knew that THE HOST had to be the one to cancel in order for us to get our money back. And apparently he was dragging his feet on processing the cancellation. So unfortunately, we had to wait for airbnb to conclude their investigation into the situation (which took over 24 hours) in order for us to be refunded (which could take up to 15 days for the bank to fully process) and for my boyfriend to be able to book using his airbnb account for a reservation during the same period of time as the cancelled home.

3) BE CLEAR IN YOUR COMMUNICATION WITH THE HOST – Airbnb reviews the communication between guests and hosts. When the host sent us the altered reservation request, we made sure to clearly ask “IS YOUR HOME UNAVAILABLE FOR THE DAYS THAT WE HAVE RESERVED?”

4) MAKE SURE ALL COMMUNICATION STAYS WITHIN THE AIRBNB APPLICATION – This sort of goes without saying, but I’m going to say it anyway. In the event of any issues, this communication becomes your evidence. If it’s done outside the airbnb platform, it may be harder to prove your case.

5) HAVE A BACK-UP PLACE SELECTED – Each time we search for new places, we typically start off with a list and whittle it down based on all of the factors that are important to us (location, price, parking situation, safety factors, amenities, etc.). Once we make our final selection from that list, we typically don’t think anything else about the homes that we cut. But when something like this happens, it would be great to have that list as a starting point if we have to go back to the drawing board. We’ve already vetted or ruled out a lot of the homes, so we wouldn’t have to re-look at places we’ve already reviewed.

6) HAVE A NON-AIRBNB OPTION IN MIND – I have been relying solely on airbnb for my travels, and that is essentially the equivalent of putting all of my eggs in one basket. Though there are stipulations about where I can travel and work from, there are still some other non-airbnb options that I can consider, and I need to have those options on standby just in case. So doing research on other options will definitely be an action item for me in the upcoming weeks.

7) HAVE MORE THAN ONE METHOD OF CASH FLOW – This taught me that at any given moment, $3,000 can be locked up in airbnb shenannigans. Having some leeway with the purse strings will help to make these types of situations not be as dire as they could be.

8) AIRBNB DOES NOT HELP YOU FIND A PLACE IMMEDIATELY – So we had heard that airbnb has helped some travelers that have been caught up in situations where the host canceled last minute. We heard that airbnb will step in and find a place for you. IN OUR SITUATION, this was not the case. First of all, we needed a place THE. NEXT. DAY. which would have been Saturday morning. We had to be checked out the next morning and had a four hour drive ahead of us. By the time someone contacted us to help find a place, it was about 7pm Saturday night. I don’t know what they expected us to do if we were, say, stuck in an airport with no place to go, or traveling with a car full of kids expecting to pull into a home and get them fed and settled at check-in. We didn’t know whether we should drive the 4 hours to the city of the original home we were supposed to go to, or stay put, or head back to Maryland and beg relatives to let us couch surf. Instead we remained in limbo for 24 hours waiting for airbnb to conclude their investigation and advise us about next steps. It was only at that point that they then told us some other options for housing.

HOW DID THINGS END UP?

So the good news is that we were able to find a place for a week, and we checked into that place just fine. Airbnb finished their investigation, refunded our money, and gave us a $200 credit (with stipulations…ugh!). In addition, they assessed penalties against the host that cancelled. Once we got to the place we were able to book last minute, our first order of business was to find another home for the remaining three weeks that were part of our original reservation, and we think we found a nice place that we are looking forward to checking into. As of now, things have all worked out, but it was definitely a stressful couple of days. We definitely learned a few valuable lessons and realize we have a few things that we need to tweak, research, and be mindful of going forward.

Has anything like this ever happened to you? What happened and how was it resolved? I’d love to hear from you!

justamarylandgirl2 Comments

Life Around the Airbnb (Fredlandia)

I feel like I should be doing better at keeping you updated on the haps with my Airbnb life, so I’m going to just start posting more frequently about the normal day to day things that happen around here.  Sometimes I feel like if nothing significant happens, then it’s not worth writing about, and quite honestly, I am realizing that’s not quite how blogging works.  I find I’m really intrigued by the journal entry type of blog posts just as much as the posts about a specific topic. 

So with that said, I’ll craft my first “Life Around the Airbnb” post and let you know what’s going on in my Airbnb life.

So here goes…

Today we are about two weeks away from checking out of this home, and here’s what we’ve been up to this week.

We are currently renting a nice two-story townhouse style condominium in a modern development in Frederick.  We positively love the home, and we love the area so much, but we absolutely do not love the neighbors.  More on that later. 

We initially rented the home for a month, but we decided to extend another month because we really felt like there was more to do and see here in Frederick. Due to the pandemic combined with the cold March weather, we were limited with how much exploring we could do, and there is so much in this area to explore.  In addition, I had a few appointments in the Maryland area that required me to stay fairly local for a couple weeks.  So, despite the neighbors that we don’t care for, we decided to stay put for another month because we love the home and the area.

A majority of this week was devoted to looking forward.

One thing about starting each rental at an Airbnb when you’re of no fixed address—it isn’t long before you have to start thinking about where you will go the following month.  So we like to get going with that search pretty soon after we move into a home.  While being able to hop around is quite freeing, the research involved in selecting your next home can be quite daunting.  And here are a few reasons why:

Price considerations – As you can expect, we have a monthly budget for our rentals.  We wanted to keep the price at or below what we’d spend on a rental or monthly mortgage payment if we stayed in one fixed location.  What we’ve discovered is, while there are a lot of great rentals that would be wonderful for a weekend trip or a family vacation, they aren’t feasible for monthly stays when you multiply out the daily rate by 30 days and then add fees.  We just are not paying $6,000 a month for an Airbnb.  Just not doing it.  So that whittles down our prospective homes quite a bit, and makes us negotiate wants versus needs.  Though there are monthly discounts (more on that later), once you add in fees and such, the prices can still rise quite high.

Monthly inventory – There are a lot of homes that are available for a weekend or for a week or two, but the inventory of monthly rentals is definitely significantly smaller than the inventory of homes that you may find when you’re researching places for that weekend girls retreat or the family beach trip. Sometimes we have looked in certain cities and the inventory for a monthly rental for our dates is less than 5 homes.

Our criteria – Anyone renting or buying anything has a set list of criteria, which includes your non-negotiables as well as the things you’re willing to be a little more flexible on.  Sometimes our options significantly decrease just by filtering out ones with no kitchen. For a space to be our home for a month, there are definitely things that are important to us.  We have learned that we operate best when a home has two bedrooms and two bathrooms at the very least (no adorably chic tiny homes for us!).  For one reason, we both work full time from home, and we both have meetings and make calls. Many times our meetings and calls are at the same time, so another bedroom or a designated office with a door is crucial.  And the bathroom…well…lol…I’m sure no explanation is needed for this one.  We rented a home with one bathroom, and it worked fine, but our preference is two if possible.

Seasonal aspects – Some areas are more popular based on the season, so working around the price hikes for certain areas can be tricky.  Yes it sounds awesome to be at the beach for a month, but guess what…you will definitely pay a premium price for a monthly stay at a beach during beach season.  And who really wants to be there in off-season?  Well…some may, but…the point usually is to enjoy the weather and the water, and to do that, you will pay higher prices.  And same is true for mountains during ski season.  So navigating those nuances can add to the trickiness of selecting a home.  You may want to be somewhere in off-season, but if it’s 10 below and you only do outdoor dining, or if the area is shut down because it’s non-peak, is it really a place you want to be?

Working the Airbnb system – The great thing about monthly rentals on Airbnb is that there is typically a discount for longer stays.  We have found that in some circumstances, extending our stay by a few days can decrease the price by a few hundred dollars.  So even if we don’t need the extra days, we may reserve them just to get the cheaper price.  But figuring out which homes that applies to, and what the right length of time needed for the best price, this can be time consuming and somewhat frustrating.

Because picking our next spot can be sort of challenging, we typically start working on that within a week of moving into a new space.  This week we searched, whittled down, selected, and reserved our next home. Can’t wait to tell you about that! 

So now that that’s done, we feel like we can breathe a bit and enjoy the remainder of our time in our current space.

And that’s what’s been happening around the Airbnb this week.

Have any questions about airbnb life or what we’ve been up to while in Frederick, Maryland, comment below or send me a message at justamarylandgirl@gmail.com! Also follow me on IG at justa_mdgirl!

justamarylandgirl

My Bestie Made Chocolate Zucchini Bread For Me

{ Click here for the amaaazinggg zucchini bread recipe by Two Peas and their Pod }

I know a lot of people will brag about their bestie. And maybe they have a legit reason to. But mine is effing awesome. Like forrealsies.

I spent a couple days with her this week and, as usual, she fed me and fed me and fed me! One of the things she made was this chocolate zucchini bread, and it is so damn good. We are both cake and chocolate lovers but I tell you, I wasn’t sure I wanted any parts of zucchini mixed with chocolate.

This is probably a good time to note, I long ago vowed I would NEVER put zucchini into my mouth EVERRRR! I love a lot of veggies, but zucchini AINT one of them! Quite honestly, I steer clear of the entire squash family. I know…that’s quite controversial, but…I likes what I likes, and I hates what I hates. And this girl HATES zucchini! lol.

OK, so back to my bestie trying to force feed me a veggie I hate… She covered it in chocolate and baked it, and told me “no really, you HAVE to try this!!” I felt like an animal being tricked…like…I know you’re just trying to make me do something I don’t want to do, but you covered it in something that I love and now I’m completely confused. GAAAAHHH!!

OK yall, long story short…I fell for it. I took the bait. The chocolate was just too enticing and I gave in. It. Was. DELICIOUS!!!! I don’t know what happened to the zucchini, and I started wondering if I completely misunderstood what she said about zucchini being in it, but she confirmed, YES it has zucchini in it! It tasted like chocolate cake with chocolate chips on it. lol. Like…you would not know there was any veggie involved in the recipe at all.

So I thought my mother, who loves chocolate but is extremely health conscious, would also love to try this magic veggie cake, so bestie made some for her. And she allowed me to film her doing it so here we go!

She actually told me that she uses a recipe that she found online on the Two Peas and Their Pod blog. She loves their site and owes all of the credit to their recipe. (I won’t rehash their recipe. Definitely go to their site for the ingredients and steps!). I even asked if she altered it in any way, and she said nope! So that’s where she found this decadent trick veggie chocolate cake recipe.

So here’s a little recap here of her baking one.

{ whisk together the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, and sea salt }

{ combine the the eggs, melted butter, oil, vanilla extract, and brown sugar }

{ this is the mountain of shredded zucchini }

{ combine the wet, dry, chocolate chips and zucchini }

Literally the ONLY thing I would MAYBE change is use milk chocolate chips instead of semi sweet. Or maybe use a mix of the two. But that’s literally the only thing. This recipe is a banger!

{ after the cake has been baked and cooled and put on a cute cake plate }

It seems like it would be a million calories and just an entire plate full of sin, but it’s legit zucchini, so you can eat it and not feel guilty. At least that’s what I did…lol.

{ oh so chocolate }

Have you made chocolate zucchini bread? How did it come out? Do you have something that seems like it should not taste good but actually tastes amazing?? Lemme know!!

justamarylandgirl

My So Called Airbnb Life

The North Carolina Modern Farmhouse Bungalow

I feel like I should have made this post a couple months ago, but…better late than never, right?  You may have seen me mention Airbnb life in a few of my IG and blog posts, so here’s why.

“Let’s find some beautiful places and get lost together”

Towards the end of last year, as my apartment lease was coming to an end, I had a decision to make. I had to decide whether to renew my lease or find somewhere else to live.  I really didn’t care for the complex I was living in, and finding a new place to rent was proving to be harder than I imagined.  Because of COVID and its restrictions on landlords, rental home inventory in my area was pretty locked up.  I didn’t want to move into another apartment, (I was moving from a bad experience with a neighbor and just did not want to be connected to another person). I wasn’t quite prepared to buy another property (I already have a condo that I rent out and am not looking to buy anything else right now), and my rental options were extremely limited for the Southern Maryland region.  As time was winding down on my lease, the whole search was absolutely stressing me out.

In addition, we were around month 9 of this crazy pandemic, we were knee deep in an unreal election cycle, civil unrest was on an uptick, and I felt like I just needed an escape of some sort.  Travel was essentially restricted so a vacation wasn’t really an option, nor was it a long-term solution.

One day, almost as a joke, I said “I should just pack up my stuff and Airbnb it until I’m over it.”

It seemed like a ridiculous idea…until it wasn’t.  What does that even mean?? Airbnb it? What are you even talking about?? Airbnb isn’t even a verb!

After a few conversations with my boyfriend, and a lot of hypothetical what-ifs, we decided what the hell!  We were both teleworking for the indefinite future, all we needed was an internet connection, and that connection did not HAVE to be in Southern Maryland. 

I swear I did not think my stuff would fit!

We came up with a list of criteria for a rental home, we entered said set of criteria, and we searched until we were numb. We whittled down our list and tuned in on one home that piqued our interest. We had probably looked at that Airbnb listing a million times before we made our decision. We decided to go for it, and eventually we made our first monthly reservation. We didn’t really know what to expect.  Could we live in a rental home for an entire month?? What if we hated it on day 1 and were stuck?? We have no place else to go!

The pictures looked adorable but, in this day of filters and angles, anything can be made to look amazing. 

Once the reservation was made, it was time to execute our plan. For the last couple months of 2020, we debated logistics, we purged, stored, and packed all our possessions.  We finished out our lease, and by January 1st, we were in our first Airbnb—an adorable modern bungalow right outside of Raleigh, NC.

North Carolina Rest Stop on the way to our first Airbnb

When move day arrived, we pulled into the driveway well after dark.  We were exhausted from cleaning out the apartment, packing up the car, visiting relatives dropping off random this and thats, doing our last-minute Maryland items, and then driving the four hours to North Carolina.  We fumbled through the self-check-in, we unpacked the car, (dropping a bottle of red wine all over the driveway…sigh…), showered and went to bed.  We barely found our pj’s and toothbrushes before we called it a night.  But the next morning when we woke up, explored our new (temporary) home, and realized how much we loved the idea of what we’d done.

The home was exactly as the pictures portrayed.  YAY!  The décor was adorable, the modern furnishings were so chic, and the personal touches from the host were perfect.  It was peaceful. The scenery was so calming. We felt relaxed and it was wonderful.

Anyone who has taken a staycation can probably relate.  It doesn’t matter if you go down the street or to another country, there is just something therapeutic about being out of your home, your day-to-day routine, your normal space, and in a new environment.  And after nine months of quarantine, and a year of an unpleasant neighbor, new scenery was so refreshing.  Even if all we did was sit inside this home and work, cook, eat, and do normal every day things, we felt like a new peaceful space, and slightly warmer weather, would be just what the doctor ordered.

While it feels super weird to have no fixed address, and to not know where I will be living two months from now, somehow my nerves are less frazzled than they were living next to a neighbor that drove me insane, while constantly watching news that regurgitated the COVID/election/racial injustice cycle.

I’m not entirely sure how long I’ll be an Airbnb vagabond, but I’d love to take you all on this little journey with me.  I can’t promise it will be super exciting, but I will share some homes, experiences, and lessons that I learn along the way. I’m three months and three homes into this experience, and it’s been a pretty interesting lifestyle thus far. 

Have you ever thought of doing anything like this? If so, what would be your approach? What would you want to do? Where would you want to go?

Have questions, hit me up!

justamarylandgirl