Working remotely from an apartment: what actually matters

If the trip has work in it, the criteria change completely. A room that is lovely for a weekend can be unusable on a Tuesday with three calls in it.

Here is what actually decides whether you get work done, roughly in the order it tends to go wrong.

1. Power continuity, not power

Everyone asks "is there light?". The better question is "what happens in the gap?".

Mains fails, generator starts. Between those two events there is a gap, and in that gap your router dies and your call drops. An inverter or battery covers the gap. Without one, "24-hour power" means 24 hours with holes punched in it.

Ask precisely:

• Is there an inverter or battery as well as a generator?
• Is the router on that backup, or only the wall sockets?
• Who starts the generator at 2am?

A router that is not on backup power is the commonest reason a remote-work stay fails, and almost nobody asks about it.

2. Somewhere to actually sit

A bed is not a desk. Two hours propped on a pillow is a sore neck and a wasted afternoon, and a surprising number of listings that say "ideal for remote work" have nowhere to sit upright.

Look at the photographs rather than the adjectives. If there is no table and chair at the right height in the pictures, there isn't one.

3. A door you can close

If you take calls you need a room where you are not performing for everyone else in the flat. In a shared two-bedroom let that is your bedroom. In a whole apartment you have choices, which is the real argument for taking the whole place when the trip is a working one.

Think about what is behind you on camera, and whether there is any light other than a window directly behind your head.

4. Then, Wi-Fi

Two questions are worth asking of any property about its internet.

Speed matters less than people think. A video call needs a few megabits; anything modern clears that easily.

Stability matters more than anything else. A connection that drops for eight seconds every twenty minutes is far worse on a call than one that is simply slower all day.

Carry a backup. Have a phone with data and know how to tether. Treat any property's internet as a convenience you have not paid for and you will never be caught out.

5. Noise you cannot control

A generator is a mixed blessing on a call. It keeps the lights on and it is loud, and on a video call a microphone will find it even when you have stopped noticing.

Worth asking: where is the generator relative to the bedrooms, and what are the usual hours of mains failure. If it tends to go at 7pm, your evening calls are the ones affected.

Other recurring culprits: an air conditioner immediately behind your chair, a road that gets heavier at particular hours, and a bar or church within earshot at weekends. None of these appear in a listing and all of them are answerable by asking.

A pair of wired earphones with an inline microphone fixes most of this. The microphone sits near your mouth rather than near the room, and wired means no pairing failure three minutes before a call.

6. The hours around the work

The parts nobody lists and everybody feels. Can you get coffee at 7am without leaving the building. Is there somewhere to eat that is not a restaurant. Can you do laundry if the trip extends. Is check-out early enough to ruin your last morning, and can it be moved.

On a work trip the apartment is your office for a week. Judge it as an office, not as a hotel room.

The checklist

• Is the router on backup power?
• Is there a desk and an upright chair?
• Which room can I close the door on for calls?
• Who starts the generator at night?
• Can check-out move later if I have a morning call?

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For a working stay the whole apartment is usually the right call: a bedroom to sleep in and a living room to work in beats doing both in one room. See the sizes, check your dates, or ask us about a longer stay.

Written by the team at Nobleyy Apartment.