How to Live Rent Free

apartment building

Often the biggest expense that people have each month is housing, or rent. No matter what your income is like, and even if you lose your job, you've still got to live someplace. This article suggests some ways in which anyone can live rent free.

Things You'll Need

• a desire to live rent free
• a plan
• the energy and time to find rent free situations

Instructions

1. 

   Living rent-free isn't an impossible dream as many people throughout the world are doing that very thing right now. For example, apartment managers are usually given an apartment to live in for free, in exchange for managing the apartment building, showing apartments, collecting rents, and so forth. The job has some drawbacks, but at least it means you've got shelter covered. Often either the husband or the wife of an apartment manager team, and most jobs managing apartments specify a married couple, will work outside the home while the other person takes care of more of the day to day apartment management work.

2. Have you ever considered becoming a housesitter? If your situation allows it, you can become a housesitter, a person who lives in other peoples homes for periods ranging from a week to months, making sure that their home and property is safe and secure, any pets are cared for, plants watered, etc.

   The downside for this job is, of course, the moving from job to job, but if you need to start saving money, are reliable, responsible, and can provide some references, housesitting may be perfect for you.

3. Another way to live rent-free is to become a roommaid, or live-in housekeeper. In exchange for cooking, cleaning, yard work, and sometimes child-care, you get to live rent free, though usually only a bedroom is strictly for your use, and you get paid a salary too.

4. There are grants and housing assistance programs available in many states that allow you to live rent-free for a period of time if you qualify. You'll need to do some research to find these opportunities but they're out there.

   Check your areas social services programs, and then go online and do some research into grants for rental/housing assistance to find out just what you might qualify for, and what grants and housing assistance programs there are for your city. Then apply, you just might qualify. I personally know someone who lived rent-free for one year in my city through a rental assistance program.

5. 

   Self-storage companies hire on-site managers who live, rent-free, on the storage business premises in a house or apartment as well as being paid a salary for the work they do.

6. 

   Consider a home sharing arrangement with an elderly person. Often they will have a home with a spare bedroom, which you could occupy rent-free in exchange for keeping them company, thus giving them peace of mind because they are no longer living alone, and probably some light cooking or housekeeping duties.

7. There are some other resident type jobs too like being a dorm mother, a camp counselor or camp cook, a worker at a resort, or a ski lodge, a nursing home aid, and things like that where a room or a place to live is part of the payment for the work you do there.

   In the resources section, there is a link to coolworks, where camp and resort type jobs can be found.

8. There's always going home to live with mom and dad, if you're young and desperate enough, and if they'll take you in.

9. 

   Become a caretaker. You might caretake a farm, a business site, a vacation home, or a hundred other possible places. The caretaker Gazette is a good place to look for these situations. See the resources section below for the link.

10. Another way to live rent free is to rent a house or apartment with several bedrooms, you live in one, and rent out the others for enough money to cover the monthly rent. Then your own rent is covered.

    This makes you a landlord, with all the problems associated with that though, so go carefully, and get everything in writing, if you decide to try this way of living rent-free.

Tips & Warnings

• Do some research before you make the commitment to any rent-free idea. Find out all you can about the pros and cons of whatever idea you're considering, before you do anything. The better prepared you are, the more likely it is that your rent-free experiment will be a success.

Resources

• Coolworks
• National Shared Housing Resource Center
• Caretaker Gazette