San Francisco hotels pricey? Van on Airbnb is only $92 a night
A Chevy van in San Francisco renting for less than a hundred bucks a night might be the best deal in town.
You can rent a castle on Airbnb and a treehouse. Boats are popular, and there are plenty of farmhouses. So why not a van?
As reported on the SF.StreetsBlog, an enterprising Airbnb user in San Francisco has started advertising a 1990 Chevy Conversion van, offering the vehicle (with just 45,000 miles!) for only $92 a night.
One might think the nightly rate (which is more if you consider the service charge) is a bit much to pay to sleep in a cramped space probably better suited for a Scooby Doo video. But, as everyone knows, real estate is pricey in San Francisco -- even if the total square footage is no more than that of a single parking space.
"She runs great and has a cozy queen-size van bed in the back and three captain's chairs, including the driver's," the ad reads. "It has a clean record and gets pretty good gas mileage for a van."
To be sure, the listing may well be no more than someone's joke, but then again, with all the different kinds of dwellings that can be found on Airbnb -- which allows owners to rent out their properties on a short-term basis -- there's plenty of reason to believe that this is real. The van's owner did not immediately respond to an interview request from CNET.
"Airbnb is an open marketplace to list unique spaces," an Airbnb spokesperson told CNET. "That's how we came to have treehouses, teepees, and private islands as part of our offering."
But the Airbnb spokesperson may have doused hopes that whoever rents the van can take advantage of its "good gas mileage." That's because Airbnb's policy requires that all "spaces must be used for lodging purposes and that spaces like this van need to be affixed to a set location during the reservation."