A few years ago, Khaled Khaled envisioned a new world order for renters: “I started telling everyone, 'Nobody will sign leases for apartments anymore.'”
He made this bold claim at the start of a twelve-month journey that took him around the world and from one home to the next – 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 landed a work visa and a job at Kasa, a national short-term rental company focused on the technology industry. He was happy with the status quo of his life. “I always loved San Francisco and imagined that I would live there one day,” he recalls.
That was until his brother – who was also his roommate – decided to get married and gave Khaled an apartment he couldn't afford. He looked around for options, but nothing felt right.
The pandemic was in full swing at the time, bringing with it a lot of anxiety but also an unexpected sense of opportunity. Mr. Khaled, who describes himself as a minimalist, put his few belongings into storage and set out to explore the world. His work for Kasa as a data analyst, which mostly involves writing code, he could do from anywhere. “I thought I could just travel for a few months,” he said. “My theory was that anywhere outside of San Francisco would be cheaper.”
He expected to see a few cities and then maybe return to San Francisco. “But when I started traveling,” he said, “I realized I didn't want to live in a long-term lease again. I know this is from a position of privilege, but I realized you don't necessarily have to be in a place where there's bad weather, for example. When you don't have immediate family yet, it feels like the only thing that keeps people in one place is working in the office, and that's not necessary with remote work.”
His first stop was Los Angeles, where he had friends and family. Then he went to Chicago for a few weeks to meet a friend. He stopped in New York, Philadelphia and Washington, DC, cities he had never seen or only briefly. He wanted to get a better feel for each city. “Every place was always open to me,” 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 and South Africa – and always found housing options that didn't require a long-term commitment. None of the experiences were negative. And even if they had been, he was confident he would “find something to do,” he said.
“I lived in Qatar in the 90s,” he said 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 accommodation platforms or asked for housing offers on social media. “I always booked accommodation at the last minute so I had as much time as possible to figure out where I wanted to go next,” Khaled said. “It really was more or less about availability.” He made a point of not staying anywhere for more than a month, traveling on one tourist visa after another.
He tried to avoid hotels because he didn't want to give the impression that he was on vacation: “I always had to remind myself that I was actually working.” He also avoided staying in accommodations that seemed too generic. “I like charming apartments,” he said. “It's important to me that they feel like a real home.”
$3,600 | Prospect Heights, BROOKLYN
Khaled Khaled, 31
Profession: Data Analyst
About the nomadic community: Mr Khaled said it wasn't difficult to find other nomads as he moved from one city to the next, especially with remote work becoming more common. “It felt like everywhere I traveled there were other people doing the same thing,” he said, “so it didn't feel like anything special. You could become part of one or two communities if you really wanted to.”
On the subject of people watching: One of the reasons Khaled came to Prospect Heights was to people watch from Caffè De Martini on Vanderbilt Avenue. He's grateful to still live so close to his favorite spot. “I love to romanticize everything in my mind,” he admitted, “and I thought maybe it meant something that I lived right next to the street that made me fall in love with Brooklyn.”
By April 2023, Khaled had already moved a dozen times and decided to make a second stop in New York. “It had been a year since my first visit,” he said, “and I was even more immersed in this fantasy of never signing a lease again.”
His first visit had stuck in his mind and he couldn't shake it. His friends in New York had persuaded him to come back. Still, he told himself that it would be another short stay. “I really didn't think I would move here,” he recalled.
When his temporary housing in Greenpoint came to an end, however, he didn't leave. He moved to the Lower East Side for a month. After that, he moved to the West Village and then to the East Village and Astoria. Eventually, he realized he was testing out the different neighborhoods.
Something had changed. “My gut told me I was going to stay here,” he said. “I thought, OK, something feels right. It felt like it was time to stay somewhere stable.”
He had hoped to snag an apartment in a brownstone. “To be honest, I never wanted a modern building,” he said. “Sometimes I find it lacking in charm, and I don't like living on one of the upper floors because then you don't want to go out as much. You get lazy.”
But he kept getting no chances at older buildings, so he reluctantly started looking at opportunities at new buildings. It was the gym at 595 Dean that caught his attention. He tried to develop a fitness program for the first time, but found it difficult to go to a gym regularly. “When I saw the gym downstairs, that was the first time I thought, OK, maybe I'll do a modern building,” Khaled said.
He moved into the TF Cornerstone project last November, and since then he's grown fond of its modern amenities — not just the gym, but also the co-working space and sundeck with grills. After all, there are older buildings across the street. “So I almost feel like I'm in a brownstone,” he said.
Khaled's employer, Kasa, has moved to the city, 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 you're not a real company,” he said. “Seeing people makes you feel mentally stable. I think going to the office every now and then is a good feeling. And if I'm honest, it's also important for me to get off my butt.”
The opportunity to socialize was largely what convinced Mr. Khaled to stay in New York and abandon his aversion to a long-term lease. “Diversity was important to me,” he said. “Not just culturally, but professionally. I don't just want to be around people who do the kind of work that I do. I think growing up in the Middle East, I grew up in different cultures. In the Middle East, there are a lot of expats from different parts of the world and you always come into contact with different people. That opportunity was really important to me.”
Yet the communities he's building in his neighborhood and beyond are still connected by shared experiences in one way or another. “It's important to have people I can relate to,” says Khaled, “and they don't have to be from the same culture. I can relate to immigrants more than I can to long-time New Yorkers, even if they're Arabs who grew up here. I can relate to immigrants more. I like meeting people who can tell stories about their own journeys.”