Your money stays with us until you have seen the place.
Most mid-term rentals in Bali and Da Nang are still arranged over WhatsApp and settled by bank transfer. You send two months up front to someone you have never met, and if the apartment is not the one in the photos, that is your problem. This is the part we are actually trying to fix.
From enquiry to check-out
You ask, the host says yes
You send dates and a short note about who you are. The host approves or declines. Nothing is charged while you are talking.
You pay the first month, and we hold it
First month plus our fee, charged to your card. The money sits with us. The host sees that it is there, which is what makes them hold the dates.
Your deposit is held, never handed over
We place a hold on your card for the deposit amount. It is not transferred to the host and it is not sitting in anyone's bank account. Nobody can spend it — including us.
You arrive and look around
You have 48 hours. If the place materially differs from the walkthrough you watched, you tell us and we refund you in full and rebook you — because we still have the money.
The host gets paid
48 hours after check-in, month one is released. Every following month is charged on the same date and paid straight through.
You leave, the hold drops
The deposit hold is released when you check out. A host who wants to claim against it has to show us what was damaged, and you get to respond before anything is charged.
What we charge
Two numbers, and one of them is capped.
You, the guest
5%
Capped at the $400 equivalent
On a six-month stay that cap is the difference between a few hundred dollars and a few thousand — a long stay is closer to a lease than a hotel booking, and the fee should reflect that.
The host
0%
For the first twelve months, then 3%
We would rather have supply than margin right now, and saying so is more honest than pretending it is permanent.
Why a cap at all?
A percentage fee makes sense on a weekend. On a six-month stay it stops being a service charge and starts being a tax on staying still. Our costs do not scale with your rent — a 180-day booking takes about as much work as a 30-day one — so the fee should stop growing at some point. It stops at $400.
What every listing carries
Proof, not adjectives.
One unbroken take
The host films front door to bathroom in a single continuous recording, in our app, timestamped and geotagged. We reject anything stitched together. Cuts are where the lies live.
A speed test with a link behind it
Down, up and latency, from a speedtest.net run the host does themselves and publishes. Somebody here opens the link and checks it against the figures on the listing — which catches a number that does not match its own result page, and not a run done somewhere else. Every result is dated, and it stops counting after 90 days.
One all-in monthly number
Rent, utilities and mid-stay cleaning resolved into a single figure, with the arithmetic shown. Where utilities are capped we quote the ceiling, so the bill can only come in lower.
What a listing actually is
The video is the listing.
Not a gallery a host curated. One continuous recording, front door to bathroom, with the host’s dated speedtest.net result beside it — checked here before the listing went up. Every still you browse is pulled out of that same footage, so there is nothing in the gallery that was not in the room.
It is also the slow part. A home cannot be published until somebody has filmed it and somebody else has watched all of it, which is why the catalogue starts small and grows at the speed of the filming rather than the speed of the sign-ups.
Walkthrough · single take
4:46 · no cutsThese frames are generated — the player is the format drawn, not a home. On a real listing every still in the gallery is pulled from the walkthrough at the checkpoint it shows, so nothing you browse was not in the room.
The alternatives
Right now you choose between a tourist product and a classifieds board.
Airbnb will take your money safely but was built for three nights. Furnished Finder understands month-long stays and then leaves you to wire a deposit to a stranger. Most of Bali and Da Nang still runs on WhatsApp.
| RemoteStay | Airbnb | Furnished Finder | WhatsApp + bank transfer | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Unedited walkthrough video | Required on every listing | Photos only | Photos only | Whatever gets sent |
| Built for 30–180 day stays | The only thing we do | A discount slider on a hotel product | Yes | Yes |
| Money held until you arrive | Released 48h after check-in | Held | No — platform exits at introduction | You wire it and hope |
| Deposit held by a third party | Held on your card, never transferred | Host claims against you | None | Sent to a stranger's account |
| Guest fee | 5%, capped at $400 | ~14–16%, uncapped | None — and no protection either | None |
Where we operate
Two cities, and nothing published in either yet.
Liquidity is local — two hundred verified homes in one city beats five thousand scattered across forty — and right now that is the plan rather than the present tense. Every home is filmed, and carries a speed test somebody here checked, before it appears — so the catalogue starts at nothing and grows slowly. That is the trade, and it would be a strange thing to hide on the page about how this works.
BaliIndonesia
None published yetVillas and apartments across the Canggu–Pererenan corridor and Ubud. Construction noise and power cuts are the two things listings never mention — so we film both.
Canggu · Pererenan · Ubud
Da NangVietnam
None published yetBeachfront and hillside apartments from An Thuong to Son Tra. Cheaper than Bali, faster fibre, and a police registration step most hosts get wrong.
An Thuong · My Khe · Son Tra
The awkward questions
Answered the way we would answer them in person.
Is this a lease?
- No. What you sign here is a Stay Confirmation — a plain-language record of the dates, the all-in price, what is included and what happens if either side cancels. It is not a tenancy agreement and we do not pretend it is one. If you want a local lease as well, you and the host can attach your own; we give you a slot for it.
So what are you, legally?
- A verification service and a payments facilitator. The arrangement to stay is between you and the host. We check the property, hold the money, and stand behind the walkthrough being accurate. We are not your landlord and we are not your letting agent.
Who holds my deposit?
- Nobody, in the sense that matters. It is a hold on your card through Stripe — no cash moves, so there is no account for it to disappear from. Compared with wiring two months' rent to a stranger's Indonesian bank account, which is what most of this market runs on today, that is the entire point.
What if I need to leave early?
- The cancellation terms are on the Stay Confirmation before you pay, in the same words we use here. There is no separate policy document and no tier system. What you read is what applies.
What stops a host lying in the walkthrough?
- Not much, on its own — which is why it is one continuous take with a device timestamp, why a person watches all of it, why the speed test has to come with a published speedtest.net link somebody here opens, and why the badge expires after twelve months. Any single one of those is gameable, and we would rather name that than imply otherwise: the speed test is the host's own run, and what we check is that the link says what they told us it says. Together they are a lot of effort for a listing that then gets a refund claim on day two.