I have used the Internet to find myself accommodation a couple of times now. Once to San Francisco and more recently to Australia. Both times I received excellent results but only after a great deal of searching and checking. Both times I wanted something comfortable rather than fancy and of course cheap rather than expensive. This meant that the specialist sites that offered holiday or vacation accommodation were not of great value or interest to me. These kinds of sites seem to focus on the high end of the market and will have you believe nothing is available for less than $1,000 a week.

Instead, I concentrated on the standard rental websites. That is, local agents that rent a wide range of accommodation. Such are as easily accessible nowadays anywhere in the world as those around the corner. What you need to do is use the Internet to find out where you want to be and then track down the local agents. In the case of San Francisco I wanted to be near the Berkeley campus and in Australia in a bush setting but within 2-3 hours of Sydney. Google Earth is also helpful once you begin to narrow things a bit.

But local agents want you to rent for 6 months! you ask. Usually I reply. But with hundreds of listings they always have a few that are short-term and more importantly don't ask more than the average rent. Average rent is usually about half the going rent for accommodation listed as 'vacation' properties.

So what did I end up with? In the case of San Francisco I spent a month in a lovely one bedroom apartment - a subdivision of an old house - about 10-15 mins walk from UCB and even closer to the BART station. I obtained this through a local summer rentals agency that put me in touch with the owner directly. A few emails and a bank transfer handled the deposit. The rest of the rent was paid on arrival in cash.

In Australia, I ended up in a three bed-room house set on a mountain side over looking spectacular farming country and down to the coast. It was about 10 mins drive from a lovely little town called Berry and about 2 hours from Sydney. A local agent treated the month lease as a normal lease arrangement, which meant I had to pay a bond. But in Australia that is a very straightforward and government regulated business.

So overall I would happily use the Internet but would prefer to go local - time consuming - but fun to research what you want and get a great deal.

Learn more about this author, Peabody Snickersbee.
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