A few years ago, Khaled Khaled envisioned a new world order for renters: “I started telling everyone, ‘No one is going to sign apartment leases anymore.’
He made the bold claim at the start of a 12-month journey that took him around the world, from apartment to apartment – before reaching an unexpected conclusion.
It was 2019 and Mr. Khaled was living in San Francisco. A Palestinian who grew up in Abu Dhabi and Qatar, he had obtained a work visa and a job with Kasa, a national short-term rental company focused on the technology industry. He was happy with the status quo of his life. “I’ve always loved San Francisco and imagined that’s where I’d end up living,” she recalls.
That is, until his brother — who was also his roommate — decided to get married, leaving Mr. Khaled with an apartment he couldn’t afford on his own. He looked around for options, but nothing felt right.
The pandemic was then in full force, introducing a range of anxieties but also an unexpected sense of possibility. Mr. Khaled, who considers himself a minimalist, put his few possessions into storage and set out to explore the world. His work for Kasa as a data analyst, which mostly involves writing code, could be done from anywhere. “I thought I might travel for a few months,” he said. “My theory was that anywhere outside of San Francisco would be cheaper.”
He expected to live a few cities and then maybe come back to San Francisco. “But once I got around to traveling,” he said, “I realized I didn’t want to go back to living on a long-term lease again. I know this is coming from a privileged place, but I realized that you don’t have to be in a place with, say, bad weather. If you don’t have an immediate family yet, you feel like the only thing that keeps people in one place is reporting to an office, and that’s not necessary with remote work.”
His first stop was Los Angeles, where he had friends and extended family. Then he went to Chicago for a few weeks to meet a friend. He had stops in New York, Philadelphia, Washington, DC, targeting cities he had never seen or seen only briefly. He wanted to get a better feel for everyone. “There was always an opening in every place,” Mr. Khaled said. “I asked myself, could this be the city where I change my mind and stay for a long time?”
He lived in Belize, Taiwan, Lebanon, South Africa — always finding housing opportunities that didn’t require a long-term commitment. None of the experiences were negative. And even if they had, he was sure he would “find something to do,” he said.
“I lived in Qatar in the 90s,” he noted with a laugh. “It was a desert. You can make the best of any situation.”
In some cases, he stayed with people he knew. In others, he used short-term housing platforms or solicited housing leads on social media. “I always closed a position at the last second so that I had as much time as possible to figure out where I wanted to go next,” Mr Khaled said. “It was really more or less about availability.” He made it a point not to stay anywhere longer than a month, traveling on one tourist visa after another.
He tried to avoid hotels because he didn’t want to give himself the impression that he was on holiday: “I had to keep in mind that I was actually working.” He also avoided staying in places that felt too generic. “I like a charming apartment,” she said. “It’s important to me that it feels like a real home.”
$3,600 | Prospect Heights, BROOKLYN
Khaled Khaled, 31
Occupation: Data Analyst
For the nomadic community: Mr Khaled said it was not difficult to find other nomads while moving from one city to another, especially with the growing embrace of telecommuting. “I felt like everywhere I traveled, there were other people doing the same thing,” he said, “so I didn’t feel special. You could be part of a community or two if you really wanted to.”
About tracking people: One of the things that drew Mr. Khaled to Prospect Heights was people-watching from Caffè De Martini on Vanderbilt Avenue. He is grateful to still live so close to his favorite place. “I like to romanticize everything in my head,” she admitted, “and I thought maybe it means something to be right next to the street that made me fall in love with Brooklyn.”
By April 2023, Mr. Khaled had moved twelve times and decided to make a second stop in New York. “It had been a year since I first visited,” he said, “and I was even more immersed in this fantasy of never signing a lease again.”
His first visit had stuck with him in a way he could not shake, and his friends in New York were urging him to return. However, he told himself it would be another short stay. “I really didn’t think I’d be moving here,” she recalls.
But when his temporary residency in Greenpoint ended, he didn’t leave. Moved to the Lower East Side for a month. After that, he moved to the West Village and then the East Village and Astoria. At some point he realized they were test drive neighborhoods.
Something had changed. “My gut told me to stay here,” he said. “I thought, OK, something is right. I felt it was time to stay somewhere stable.”
He was hoping to land an apartment in a brownie. “I never wanted a modern building, to be honest,” he said. “I feel it lacks charm sometimes and I don’t like being on a very high floor because it becomes a layer of resistance to going out. You’re getting lazy.”
But he kept bumping into older buildings, so he reluctantly began looking at possibilities in new developments. It was the gym in the building at 595 Dean that caught his eye. She was trying to develop a fitness program for the first time, but was having a hard time getting to the gym on a regular basis. “Seeing the gym downstairs, that was the first moment I thought, OK, maybe I’ll do a modern building,” Mr Khaled said.
He moved into the TF Cornerstone development last November and since then the comforts of modernity have grown on him – not just the gym, but the work space and sun deck with BBQ grills. There are, after all, older buildings across the street. “So it almost feels like I’m on a stone,” he said.
Mr. Khaled’s employer, Kasa, has moved to town, so he even shows up at the office occasionally. “I realized that if you work for a month and never see your colleagues, it almost feels like it’s not a real company,” he said. “There’s something about seeing people that makes you feel mentally stable. I think going to the office every now and then is a good feeling. And getting off my bum is also important, if I’m honest.”
The chance to make connections is, by and large, what convinced Mr. Khaled to stay in New York and abandon his aversion to a long-term lease. “Diversity was on my mind,” he said. “Not only culturally but also professionally. I don’t want to just be around people who do the work that I do. I think that, growing up in the Middle East, I grew up in different cultures. There are many immigrants from different parts of the world in the Middle East and you are always mixing with other people. This opportunity really meant a lot to me.”
But the communities he builds in his neighborhood and beyond are still bound, in one way or another, by shared experiences. “It’s important to have people I can relate to,” Mr. Khaled said, “and they don’t have to be from the same culture. I relate more to immigrants than to longtime New Yorkers, even if they are Arabs who grew up here. I am most likely related to an immigrant. I love meeting people who have stories from their own journeys.”