Huge sigh of relief breathed: one of the things that made this whole trip financially feasible was the idea that we would be renting out our home in Seattle for roughly what we would be spending on lodging during our travel. When you figure that we’ll be shopping at grocery stores and making most of our meals at home, as well, plus I’ll be working and continuing to earn the same income while we travel, it changes the trip from “expensive vacation” “living exactly like we were, just in a different city”.
We listed our house on AirBnB, Craigslist, VRBO and a few other places, fussed over the pictures, descriptions and prices and waited.
And waited.
As the date started to loom closer, I upped my game: I ran a Short Term Wallingford Rental post on Wallyhood, I tweeted it, I posted to Facebook.
I even bought Facebook ads pointing to our Craigslist ad: I spent about $40 or $50 on ads targeting people “interested in Seattle, with the intent to travel” as well as “people living in Seattle with the intent to move”. It’s actually kind of creepy the things that Facebook knows about you. They reputedly have an algorithm that can identify people who are likely to get divorced (friending opposite sex friends you haven’t seen since high school, perhaps?), they know who hasn’t come out to their parents yet, and they know who’s expecting. They certainly know who’s been naughty and nice.
Anyway, in the end, it was good old Craigslist that came through for us. We got an email Saturday night from a couple that was interested. We had them over Sunday morning, and we agreed on the spot.
It’s really a perfect match: their family is traveling from Idaho to Seattle so that the father can donate his kidney to his eight-year-old son, and the hospital has asked that they stay close for three months so they can keep an eye on them while they recuperate. Their check-in date is the same day we leave, and we were planning to be gone for three months. So, we couldn’t ask for a more perfect match. (And the odds of the place getting trashed from late night dance parties seems fairly low.)
Thus far, our monthly lodging for Seville and Barcelona is almost exactly what we’ll be collecting in rent. Everybody’s happy!
