Rent in San Diego is climbing higher every single month. And for most young professionals the dream of owning a home is completely dead.
But one 28 year old man decided he had seen enough. Austin Wells was tired of throwing his paycheck into a black hole of city rent.
The housing market left him with exactly one desperate option.
So he looked at the numbers and realized a standard apartment was a financial trap. He needed a radical escape plan that actually made economic sense.
He signed a twelve year lease for a space of two hundred and thirty seven square feet. The price tag for this commitment was three hundred thousand dollars.
A floating metal giant was about to become his permanent zip code.
But this expensive tiny home is not sitting on a regular California street corner. Austin bought a twelve year lease on the MV Narrative.
It is a mega cruise ship being built to travel the globe. Alister Punton and Shannon Lee designed it to offer affordable apartments for life at sea.
Austin works remotely for the virtual reality department at Meta. So he realized he could literally take his job anywhere in the entire world.
His corporate desk is getting traded for global ocean coordinates.
He explained his thought process clearly. ‘This is probably the first time ever that there is even the ability to have a standard job and even consider working and living from a floating apartment complex.’
And the financial math actually works out in his favor. Rent in his home city averages nearly three thousand dollars every single month.
By moving his life onto the ocean he will save roughly a thousand dollars a month. The ship lease breaks down to two thousand a month.
A self sustaining city on the water is being built around him.
But he will not be floating around the world alone in the dark. The massive vessel is designed to hold five hundred residencies and up to one thousand residents.
The amenities on board make a standard apartment building look like a joke. He will have access to a private gym and a fresh farmers market.
There is a huge swimming pool and a modern cinema for the residents to enjoy. The creators even planned to include a full library and a school.
The itinerary reads like a wealthy retirees impossible bucket list.
The lifestyle is built for constant exploration. The ship will travel to places like Slovenia and Albania and Croatia and Greece.
It will even sail all the way up to the freezing waters of the Arctic Circle. Austin plans to spend three years of his lease living full time on the moving ship.
Many people assume this means he has to quit his job. They think he is just running away from the real world on a permanent vacation.
The reality of working from a moving vessel requires a strange compromise.
He does not have to hand in his resignation letter to chase his travel dreams. He just has to completely adjust his schedule.
Austin told reporters about how his daily life will actually function on the water. ‘The thing that most excites me is I don’t have to upend my daily routine, in order to go see the world.’
He detailed the exact compromise. ‘My working hours will be shifted towards evenings, nights, and very early mornings, but that does open up the ability for me to see a city midday to afternoon.’
