Congrats! You got a job as a traveling therapist! Now, you need to find short-term housing for your travel therapy assignment. Finding travel therapy housing can be one of the most challenging parts of travel therapy.
You have come to the right place! As a therapist who has taken travel assignments for over 15 years, I have a lot of advice to share to help you find housing more easily. Let’s dive into tips to find short-term housing for your 13-week travel therapy assignment.
I’m Julia, and I worked travel assignments all over the United States from New England to Hawaii. Finding housing was one of the most challenging parts of work if I’m being honest with you. The difficulty of finding housing can vary a lot based on the town that you’re going to and the season of the year. e.g., housing in snowbird towns in the winter is more challenging to find than in the summer.
In this post, I’m happy to share the best tips I have to help you find housing. Through travel therapy and the places I’m listing in this post, I’ve lived in some spectacular places. I’ll share pictures throughout this post of the places I’ve lived.
How to Find Travel Therapy Housing
To start, we will discuss two paths you can take to find housing for your travel therapy assignment. You can have your agency provide housing, or book it yourself using a housing stipend.
I’ll break down the differences between these two options next.
Have your company provide housing
Did you know that many staffing agencies will provide housing for you on your travel therapy contract?
Having your agency find housing is often not discussed or used because it can be quite costly to your overall pay package. Learn more about pay packages here.
When your company sets up housing, they tend to place you in pricier hotels or corporate housing units. This means you would receive less money each week from your paycheck because some of it would be allocated to housing costs.
However, the benefit to this is that you would have no upfront housing costs and would not have to sign a lease, submit to a credit check, or find housing yourself.
Take a housing stipend and find travel therapy housing yourself
While this option requires more work on your end, it offers greater flexibility in determining where you live. This is what most travelers do to find housing.
It also gives you the option to spend more or less on housing than your company would. Whether you are a minimalist or a luxury seeker, these options offer more flexibility in finding what you want.
Where to find Temporary Housing for Travel Therapy Assignments
Here are some ways and websites to find short-term housing for your travel therapy assignment. When using these methods, especially sites that don’t verify landlords, like Facebook and Craigslist, I highly recommend being very aware of scams and misrepresentations.
Hot Tip:
When searching for an apartment in a new place as a traveling therapist, consider booking yourself in a hotel for the first week of your contract.
By staying in a hotel, you know that you can get to your contract and relax in a place to stay.
Then, you can use the first week of your contract to scout out apartments while you are on location at your assignment. You can also ask co-workers if they know of any open units.
Many hotel brands offer suites with kitchens to make your stay easier. I work with Extended Stay America to offer deals on stays.
Save on Extended Stay America with promo “AEBEN”
Furnished Finder
Our first website, Furnished Finder, is designed to help traveling healthcare professionals find housing for their assignments.
Furnished Finder acts as both a search engine for travelers to find housing and a reverse search for landlords to find travelers.
On Furnished Finder, travelers cannot only search for units but also post their own listings. This listing is sent to all landlords in that location, along with their contract details. Landlords can then contact the traveler.
I’ve used Furnished Finder a lot for travel therapy housing and am especially happy with the reverse search feature, where landlords reach out to me.
I have a full review of Furnished Finder here, which I recommend reading because I get into more depth on the subject there, but I’ll summarize it here.
Furnished Finder is, more or less, the first place most travel therapists look for housing. However, it can be frustrating because the site’s technology isn’t intuitive or up to date. The website often doesn’t update listing availability, and it is hard to communicate with landlords.
There are also scams on Furnished Finder, so always use your discretion when booking a place or paying a deposit. Furnished Finder will not act as a middleman between you and any landlord or listing dispute. It’s between you and the landlord at that point.
Airbnb
When you think of Airbnb, you may think of vacation rentals. However, you can also book longer-term month-to-month rentals from them. Yes, on Airbnb, you can search for 3-month periods and often find discounted pricing for longer stays.
One of the positive things about Airbnb is its great review system, and you’ll find many reviews of the units and hosts. These reviews are helpful in determining whether a unit is where you want to stay.
Airbnb also offers customer support to step in and help you with any landlord-tenant disputes, which is a bonus.
VBRO
VBRO, short for “Vacation Rental By Owner,” offers a wide range of properties for rent. Similar to Airbnb, you can search for longer-term rentals on VBRO.
Landing
Landing is a subscription model that has a network of apartments in over 300 cities across the U.S.
You can stay in these apartments with flexible, short-term leases. You can set either a move-in or a move-out date for a set fee. There are also more flexible pricing options.
They also have a 7-Day Guarantee that if you are not satisfied with your home after move-in, they can move you to a new Landing or provide a full refund.
They don’t have application fees or deposits, and you can transfer to any unit in their network with a 2-week notice if you are a member. This is great for the fast-paced life of changing contracts as a traveling therapist.
Craigslist
Craigslist is the OG (original) housing website and one that I remember searching through for hours to find housing for many assignments.
You can use Craigslist to find an apartment, a sublet, or a shared place with roommates.
Like Furnished Finder, you can search for units on Craigslist or post an advertisement and have landlords reach out to you.
While Craigslist has a wealth of listings because it is free to post, it is full of scammers.
Other Apartment Listing Websites:
Contact local realtors/agents
In an era where the internet makes everything so accessible, it seems like every available unit should be listed online. However, that’s not the case. Not every landlord is going to list their place online. Some landlords prefer to list units with real estate agents or even post a “for rent” sign on a bulletin board.
You can search for “real estate agents + location you are working in” to find agents in your area that might be able to help you find a unit. Believe it or not, I have also found really amazing units by walking around apartment buildings and looking at their “for rent” signs on their building bulletin boards
Extended Stay Hotels
Extended-stay hotels offer the best of both worlds: the comfort of home and the amenities of a hotel. These hotels cater to long-term travelers and offer studios and even one-bedroom units with kitchenettes.
Extended Stay America, Homewood Suites, and several Marriott chains all offer extended-stay units.
Extended Stay Hotels often come with weekly house cleaning, daily coffee and snacks, wifi, and utilities included, and more!
When booking an extended-stay hotel, look for special pricing for longer stays. You can call the hotel manager directly to inquire about a long-term rate or use the promotions that I have here. For Extended Stay America, I am happy to offer promo codes that offer up to 40% off stays.
For the most updated codes, please check out this blog: Extended Stay America Promo Codes
Other benefits of Extended Stay Hotels:
- Often, they accept pets
- Weekly housekeeping services
- Complimentary coffee, snacks, and sometimes meals
- Hotel loyalty points
- Perhaps a gym or pool on-site
Ask Your Co-Workers
The struggle to pay bills is real as a healthcare professional.
As somebody who has taken a lot of travel therapy contracts and met a lot of therapists, I found that many therapists and nurses rent rooms to travelers, especially in places that get a constant flow of temporary staff.
While living with a co-worker may not be your ideal, it is worth looking into. I have called managers after accepting positions to ask whether anyone on staff rents to travelers. You can also rent a hotel room for the first week of your contract and ask peers whether any of them rent out rooms or know anyone who does.
Facebook Marketplace and Groups
Last but not least: Facebook. Facebook has become the mecca of all things community buy-and-sell-related.
Love it or hate it, it is a place where you can list your unit for rent for free, which is enticing to many landlords.
There are many Facebook groups that are dedicated to connecting traveling healthcare professionals with landlords. If you search for “Travel nurse Housing,” many groups will appear.
Here are a few:
The benefit of using a travel nurse group to find housing is that landlords are (hopefully) familiar with traveling healthcare professionals and understand our industry a bit.
You can also change your Facebook Marketplace location to your assignment zip code and search for units on Facebook Marketplace. Or, you can search for community groups that allow housing posts in your temp location and post/search there.
I can’t say this enough, but BEWARE OF SCAMS ON FACEBOOK. Many of the sites I listed above in this article spend considerable time verifying who posts on their sites and ensuring that fake listings do not appear. Facebook does not verify posts and is a hotbed for scammers to list fake units or message you about a unit that they have when, in reality, they are scamming you.
To Conclude:
Short-term housing can be a significant challenge for traveling therapists.
If you choose to take company-sponsored housing, you may earn less than if you find your own place. However, finding your own place can be difficult. Searching through listings, avoiding scammers, and taking a chance on a unit can all be stressful parts of an already hard journey.
Take a deep breath and relax as you search and decide on options.When you find an apartment, check out my tips for making your short-term housing feel like home!
Actually the bill rates are good if you eliminate the staffing company. Any shortfall in $ is due to their cut. You really don’t need them, they need you.
Do you know of any therapists that were able to actually work abroad? Is it possible to get licensed to work in another country? I’m looking into this career path and am having trouble finding much info about it getting certified abroad online
Yes! Search this website for “south korea” and “Australia” and some articles will come up. “SLPs Abroad” on FB is another good resource