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Help / FAQs
A quick reference for how Trustead works during alpha — vouches, connection and vouch scores, payments, hosting, and the rough edges to watch for. Tap any question to expand it.
What Trustead is, and how to find your way in.
Trustead is a home rental network built on trust and privacy.
It's for people who want to rent their real homes to people they can trust — vs. rental properties to complete strangers.
This already happens in email chains and facebook groups — but there's no management tools or ability to extend your network. This gives those groups a platform.
Building your network is quick and simple: You vouch for people you know, they vouch for people they know.
These vouches create a graph that measures how connected people are, and how trusted they are overall. It creates trust before and in addition to reviews.
The network also creates the opportunity for privacy, and the ability to control who sees your listing — while casting your net a little wider than only people you know.
Trustead was built trying to solve the real life problem of renting your actual house without all the issues associated with it.
We appreciate you taking the time to check it out, and are excited to build it together. If you have any feedback or ideas, we'd love to hear them: loren@staytrustead.com
This is not a better Airbnb. This is an Airbnb for people who want to rent their actual homes, not rental properties. And people who want to rent with privacy and to people they trust.
A few specific differences:
Alpha — the first testing phase. The rough roadmap, in the language of the onboarding tour:
Expect rough edges, copy that's still changing, and a few half-built corners. Your feedback genuinely shapes what gets built next.
No — anyone can sign up with a US phone number. An invite from someone already on Trustead is just a head start: tap their link, sign up, and you join already vouched by them and connected at 1°, so you can see and book inside their network from day one.
Without an invite, you sign up cold — no vouches yet. You can still browse anything hosts have opened to wider degrees, and grow your network from there by inviting friends or getting vouched.
Sign-up during alpha is phone-only — we text a one-time code to a US number, no password. Sign-in supports phone code, Google, and an email-and-password fallback. Email and other signup providers will come back online in later phases.
You're one of the first few hundred people on Trustead. Things change — copy gets reworded, features land mid-month, and you'll occasionally hit something that feels half-done. In return, your feedback shapes the product. If anything feels off, send a note through the contact form on /help.
Vouches, degrees, connection score, vouch score, ratings.
A vouch is one person saying "I know this person and I'd stand behind them." There are two types — Vouch ("I know them") and Vouch+ ("I know them very well"). You also tag how long you've known each other (under a year, 1–3, 3–6, or 6+). Both inputs feed the trust math.
Both exist — they do different jobs.
Vouches give the social tie for accountability and familiarity. Reviews give the post-stay track record. The two stack.
Yes. The invite link bundles your vouch into the same act — when your friend signs up through your link, they join already vouched by you. There's no separate "claim, then vouch" step. If the wrong person ends up on the link, you can revoke the vouch from your dashboard.
Degrees of separation through vouches:
The trust graph stops at 3°. Anyone further out simply shows as not connected.
A number reflecting how strongly the vouch chain connects you to one specific other person. Most scores live in the 0–5 everyday range, where 5 means excellent — a deep, well-vouched connection. Scores can go higher, up to 10, for truly exceptional ties.
It factors in the vouch types in the chain (Vouch vs Vouch+), how long each person has known the next, the number of paths between you (more paths = stronger), and how far apart you are (each hop decays the contribution).
Scores are color-coded so you can read them at a glance — stronger connections deepen into emerald green, weaker ones soften toward gray. It's relative to you — every viewer sees a different connection score to the same person. Hosts can require a minimum to unlock a listing.
A number reflecting how someone is vouched-for overall, across the whole network — independent of you. Same scale as connection score: 0–5 is the everyday range, with 5 meaning excellent, and scores can climb up to 10 for people with truly exceptional standing across the network.
Useful when you don't share a strong direct connection with a host but want to gauge how the rest of the network sees them. Color-coded the same way as connection scores so it's quick to read. Hosts can also gate listings on a minimum vouch score.
Badges compress a lot of trust signal into a small visual:
Tap any badge to see the math behind it — the actual chain of who vouched whom and the points each link contributed.
Yes. Vouch power is the weight your vouches carry — it multiplies how much your vouch counts toward someone else's trust connections, and it only affects your vouches, never your own guest rating.
Vouching for someone ties your vouch power to how they behave as guests. If the people you've vouched for are great guests, your vouch power goes up and your endorsements carry more weight. If they're not, it drops. If someone is getting poor ratings, you can always remove your vouch for them to recover your vouch power.
You see mutual connections — people you both know. Full vouch lists stay private to each person. The point is "you know someone in common," not "here's their address book."
Some hosts only show full details to guests inside a closer degree, above a minimum connection score, or above a minimum vouch score. If a listing is gated for you, you'll see what the host requires, where you currently stand, and the mutual connections who could introduce you or strengthen your chain.
Both sides are prompted to leave a review (5 stars for the host, the listing, and the guest) and, if it went well, to vouch the other person into their network. Post-stay vouches use a dedicated "Met on Trustead" tag so platform-met ties don't masquerade as long-standing friendships.
Those are demo accounts — labeled with a small Demo pill — seeded to make the network feel populated during alpha. They behave like real users: their vouches count, they show up in your degrees, and they appear in mutual connections. You'll see fewer of them as more real friends join.
From first message to post-stay review.
Open /browse to see listings inside your trust network. Each one shows your degree of separation from the host, your connection score, and what the host requires if they've set a gate. You can filter by where, when, guest count, place type, beds, and more.
From any listing, tap Request to stay to start a thread with the host. You don't have to commit to a booking to say hello — most hosts prefer to chat first. Conversations live in your Inbox.
Send a request with your dates and guest count. The host reviews, asks any questions, and either accepts or proposes a tweak. Before money changes hands, you'll acknowledge the host's cancellation and payment terms on the booking. After that, you coordinate check-in directly.
Off-platform. You and the host settle through whatever works between you — Venmo, Zelle, PayPal, bank transfer, cash on arrival. Trustead doesn't process payments, hold funds, or take a cut today. The host's listing shows their payment schedule (deposit, balance, what's due when) so the terms are clear up front.
Every host sets their own cancellation and payment policy on each listing. Two shapes the app supports:
You see the exact policy before booking and acknowledge it with a checkbox. Trustead doesn't enforce contracts or process refunds — both sides honor what they agreed to.
Proposals (under /proposals) is a network bulletin board for stays. Two kinds of posts:
It's meant to replace the Facebook-group / email-chain version of this. Both kinds honor the same trust-based visibility as listings.
After your stay ends, a review prompt appears in the booking thread. Guests rate the host and the listing; hosts rate the guest. Reviews are public on the listing page and the reviewer's profile. In the same flow you also get the option to vouch the other person into your network if you'd like to keep the connection.
No. Plenty of people are here just to find places to stay. You can browse, message hosts, and book without ever creating a listing.
Listing your place and choosing who sees it.
A few reasons hosts give:
Most of our hosts are renting their actual home, not a rental property — Trustead is built for that.
Switch to hosting mode from the top-right menu, then tap Create a new listing to start a 9-step wizard:
Progress saves locally as you go. Nothing publishes until you tap Publish on step 9.
You set the rule on step 8 of the wizard, and you can edit it later. Listings have two visibility layers:
For each layer you can require: anyone signed in, a minimum connection score, a minimum vouch score, a maximum degree (1°, 2°, or 3°), direct 1° only — or AND/OR combinations. Three quick presets (Standard, Open network, Private) pre-fill common shapes.
Each listing has its own cancellation and payment terms. You pick a structure (refund schedule or staged installments), choose a preset (Flexible, Moderate, Strict, or Custom), set the windows or installment dates, and that policy snapshots onto each booking. Guests acknowledge it before the booking is confirmed.
Your Dashboard surfaces host stats — upcoming reservations, listing performance, earnings summary. Individual reservations live under Hosting.
Common patterns:
You pick what works. The listing's cancellation card lays it out so the guest sees the schedule before they book.
Fees, what's shared, risk, and the rough edges.
Free now. During alpha and beta, Trustead doesn't charge any fees and doesn't process payments.
Trustead will eventually charge to keep the lights on — most likely an affordable subscription or small fee for premium features — but we'll always strive to cost less than other platforms, with a more DIY, person-to-person approach. The plan is to always have a free tier. Anyone joining during alpha and beta will get a founder rate when paid features arrive.
Visibility tiers:
Messaging happens in your in-app inbox unless you both choose to take a conversation off-platform.
Trustead facilitates introductions inside private trust networks — it doesn't process payments or act as a booking service. That said, your lease, HOA, primary-residence rules, occupancy taxes, and local short-term-rental laws still apply. Those are on you to check. We've done research on the regulatory landscape and will be professionally reviewed before paid features launch.
No. Trustead doesn't hold funds, mediate disputes, or provide coverage. Common host options:
Talk to your insurance broker about what fits.
Hosts and guests resolve issues directly. Recommended: take a security deposit, write down the damage and cleaning terms ahead of time, and reach us through the contact form on /help if something serious happens. The bigger backstop is the trust graph itself — bad behavior damages someone's standing across their whole network, not just one review.
Reach us through the contact form on /help with the username and what happened. For urgent safety situations, contact local emergency services first. A built-in block + remove-vouch flow is on the near-term roadmap.