Travel nurses love working in Houston! A combination of trendy food, fantastic nightlife, and culture helps make Houston attractive to a diverse group of people, including medical professionals. The city ranks as one of the top ten hottest dream cities in the USA for travel nurses for all the reasons listed above, and then some.
The availability of on-demand housing also contributes to the popularity of living and working in Houston on a travel assignment. When a nurse can find suitable accommodation quickly and move in with minimum fuss, it’s a win!
Before booking an expensive stay at a hotel or Airbnb (something many nurses do), take a minute and explore the option of professionally furnished apartments and on-demand housing.
When making housing arrangements, many travel nurses end up booking an extended-stay hotel. Some find temporary accommodations through online vacation rental marketplaces. While we don’t recommend it for safety reasons, some nurses search Craigslist for an apartment or co-living situation.
Each option has pros and cons, but the cons likely outweigh the positives associated with most temporary housing options.
Travel nursing agencies usually include a housing stipend in the compensation package they offer to their employees. This stipend is meant to cover the cost of housing during the assignment. However, if you opt for agency-provided housing, you will not receive a housing stipend.
Agencies usually have arrangements with a small number of corporate housing providers in a given city and the agency is the customer. Travel nurses have little choice about their housing since the corporate housing provider has limited gaps to fill.
Travel nurses who want to choose their own housing during the assignment take the housing stipend from the agency. Travelers can book their housing faster and with more choice if they take the stipend.
Hotels, even the better extended-stay units, come with a high price tag. The living space is usually small, and may not even include a kitchen, but the rent is far from negligible. Frankly, kitchens in most of these properties consist of a microwave, small refrigerator, and maybe a cooktop. Dishes and cookware tend to be minimal or non-existent.
Online booking sites like Airbnb offer a seemingly endless array of choices, but there’s a disappointing level of quality control. Craigslist and other similar sites can open up a Pandora’s Box of potential issues. Misleading information, intrusive landlords, and rental scams top the list.
Flexible furnished housing offers a better solution to the hunt for temporary living accommodations!
We live in a world where we want what we want, and we want it now. With the click of a mouse, we can order dinner, a ride, or a date!
After the short-term rental trend gained mainstream acceptance, another trend began to emerge: on-demand housing, and it’s ideal for traveling nurses working in Houston.
The difference between an extended stay hotel, corporate housing, and housing on-demand is in the details. On-demand housing offers:
A digital, fully transparent booking process, with no need for a long-term lease agreement. Only book the dates you want – without worrying about whether it fits neatly into weeklong or monthly boxes.
Well-appointed kitchens with cooking tools, blenders, and cookware are not found in most short-term or extended stay hotels.
All utilities, including the internet, are set up and ready to go when you walk in the door.
There is a happy medium between matchy-matchy, institutional hotel furniture, and the usual mishmash of furniture, decor, and personal items found in the listings of amateur Airbnb hosts.
Lodgeur offers monthly payment options for stays of 30+ nights.
Flexible extended stays are a popular choice for healthcare travelers in Houston. Most nurses begin their search by filtering for accommodation near their travel assignment or in an area with a lively, walkable neighborhood.
In the Houston area, the monthly cost to rent an unfurnished one-bedroom apartment ranges from $1,200 to $1,800, not including utilities. That’s for a long-term rental for 12-months! Short-term leases tend to be much higher. Adding furnished to the description will only further increase the cost.
With flexible extended stays, the monthly rental price typically includes everything — high-quality accommodations, modern furnishings, utilities (including high-speed WiFi), and resort-style amenities, like well-appointed gyms and sparkling pools.
Whether searching for travel nurse housing near the Texas Medical Center, or another of the Houston-area’s hospitals, be sure to consider the time needed to get to your hospital and whether your hospital has parking available on site.
Some hospitals have no parking available for nurses, who then need to park in a remote lot and take a shuttle bus to the hospital. Hospital parking costs around $200 per month.
Travel nurses can avoid traffic and save money by taking the METRORail to the Texas Medical Center instead of driving. TMC traffic is famously unpredictable but the METRORail can have you to work on time without budgeting extra time for traffic. Lodgeur at Mid Main Lofts is directly on the Ensemble Station stop of the METRORail’s Red Line. TMC is five stops away.
Travel nurses can bring a car for personal use and keep it parked in the apartment’s parking garage. They prefer to take the MetroRail to TMC for quick access to their hospitals. The travel nurses we host often share that they are looking for housing that allows them to reduce their commute time while making the most of their personal time.
When evaluating whether a furnished apartment is the one, there’s nothing wrong with having high expectations. Travel nurses tell us that this is their wish list for a great extended stay:
Beyond price and location, travel nurses look for a wide range of benefits when choosing accommodation. What often gets overlooked is a stress-free move and a great first day on a new assignment. Lodgeur is an excellent solution for travel nurses because we take care of the details:
We go above and beyond to ensure our furnished apartments are not only at the right price and in the right location but include the extras that healthcare professionals appreciate. For example, our newly constructed units keep outside noise, well, outside where it belongs so that a person can sleep peacefully. Polished concrete flooring instead of carpet cuts down on dirt and allergens.
Put it all together, and Lodgeur is a great solution for travel nurse housing.
Our travel nurses deserve a comfortable, safe, move-in-ready option for housing. Booking a furnished apartment in Houston with Lodgeur offers all of that and more.
