The last
days were, well, intense. I was freaking out a little – we only had less than 2
weeks left to find an apartment. Chris and I were staying in a very tiny room
and sharing the apartment with a flat mate, but we had to be out before the 1st
of November.
Of course, Barcelona is a big city, and new apartments become
available every single day. But it is not so easy to find an affordable flat in
a nice area with all the basic things we need. We started looking for apartments online already weeks ago, and we actually almost got an apartment for the 1st of October. It was nice, cheap, had a spacious balcony and was really close to
the beach. Unfortunately, we weren’t chosen by the owner and we had to keep on
looking. Little did we know this was an exceptional offer and that it would be
really hard to find anything similar. We browsed through hundreds of apartments
every day, for weeks, without any result. Some of the things we learned the past
weeks…
1. Apartment hunting is great for learning Spanish
Don’t bother looking for ads in English, these
will often be poorly translated; with knowing just a few words like alquiler (to rent), amueblado (furnished), fianza (deposit) and calefacción (heating), it is quite easy to decipher the ads,
even those written in Catalan. I only have a basic knowledge of Spanish; I
followed an intensive Spanish course in the beginning of this year, but
afterwards I was a little too lazy to keep it up, except for watching the
occasional Spanish art house movie or cooking shows on TV. But while I was
reading all these ads for apartments, which were mainly in Spanish, sometimes
in Catalan, I learned quite some words and sentences. I can’t have a simple
conversation in the supermarket yet, but I was surprised how easily I could
question home owners on things like the deposit, the length of the contract,
whether the apartment comes furnished or when it becomes available to rent. It
is not a must to speak fluent Spanish
to find an apartment here (obviously, we managed to find one) but a certain
vocabulary can be very useful.
2. Apartments in
Barcelona come and go FAST
If you want to find a nice apartment in
Barcelona, you have to stay up-to-date with the offer. Great apartments aren’t
online for long – Barcelona is a popular city, many people are behind their
laptops right this very moment, hunting for that one apartment in the right
neighborhood, with the right size, a decent kitchen, a cute balcony, and all of
that for the right price. There is a lot of crap
out there; in order to find something good, you need to search daily on
different websites. These are the ones we used the most:
http://www.idealista.com/
http://www.segundamano.es/
http://www.fotocasa.es/
http://www.habitaclia.com/
http://www.enalquiler.com/
http://www.loquo.com/
I also posted an ad on Loquo under the category
“busco piso” (searching for an apartment) with a short text in Spanish and in
English, explaining who we are and what type of apartment we were looking for. I
received quite a lot of replies on it (again, a lot of crap as well), so it is definitely worth the 2 minutes it takes
writing the text. If you find an interesting apartment during your daily search
or as a reply to your Loquo ad, it is ESSENTIAL to reply IMMEDIATELY, if
possible by phone. Good apartments don’t stay online for long; someone will see
it, call, schedule the appointment and decide right away. We missed out on a
lot of apartments because we didn’t directly call or weren’t able to see the
apartment the same day. Quite annoying: owners are looking for renters with a
job, but they also very often ask to schedule an appointment in the middle of
the day (evenings and weekends being out
of the question). In short: hunt, identify your target (aka dream apartment)
and ATTACK.
3. If you are not a
millionaire, you have to lower your standards
When I say dream apartment, I mean a dream
apartment for Barcelona standards: a house in relatively good condition in a
safe neighborhood (make sure to avoid El Raval: it might look nice during the
day, but you don’t want to walk there at night), rooms with windows, an
equipped kitchen, some sort of heating and ideally with a balcony or terrace
and close to either work, the center or the beach. If you want to live closer
to the beach, the apartment will be more expensive and very small (in our
budget, these were mainly studios or 30m2 sized one bedroom apartments). If you
want to live in the center, you’ll have to live with noise and hundreds of
tourists blocking your way every day. If you prefer a bigger and/or cheaper
apartment, you might want to look for one close to a metro station, or else
you’ll have to travel long every day. It’s all about compromise. We managed to
find something spacious, in good condition, well equipped, close to Chris’ work
and in a safe and very well connected area. It was a little over budget and not
furnished, but we were able to buy the bed and the couch for a reasonable price
and some closets came included. It was also a particular and not an agencia
– most apartments online are from agencies, but they charge very high fees.
Since we didn’t have to pay any commissions, we had money left to spend it on
some furniture.
4. Rent is sky-high, but prices
are negotiable
Apparently, it is totally normal here to
discuss the rent price with home owners or even with agencies. We often saw rent
prices lowered online, sometimes with 150 euros a month. On most of the pages
listed above, there are options to propose a lower monthly rent. This might not
work with very popular apartments, but it can save you a lot of money. In the
case of our apartment, we proposed a rent of 50 euros a month less, and they
agreed! Rent prices are generally high in Barcelona, but luckily they can be
reduced. Even at agencies, they proposed us lower rent prices. If you are not
in a hurry to find a place, it might just save you a lot of money
proposing lower prices at the end of the month, when owners are urgently
looking for the next renter.
5. What you see isn’t
always what you get
When browsing online, be aware of the fact that
there are many, many fake ads out there. Huge, luxurious apartments, in the
center of Barcelona, for 500 euros a month? FAKE!
Anything that looks too good to be true really
is fake. Whether particular or
posted with a logo and link of an agency – it’s fake. Don’t even think about
it, just click it away. There are a lot of scams here with apartments; they
might charge you if you want to see the apartment or the contract, or after
giving you the key. We have heard horror stories of both particulars and agencias
and we are still not sure which one is the safest. The only thing we know is
that agencies cost a lot of money and particulars not, so we decided to go with
the last one.
Also, just trust your guts. Once, we had an
appointment for an affordable temporary place at a great location, near Plaça
Reial. We were standing in front of the door, full of graffiti; the apartment
building itself looked quite spooky. We were supposed to be on the fifth floor,
but we only counted four. We were quite desperate for an apartment, but we
didn’t ring the bell, it didn’t feel right. Not looking forward to being
robbed, we just decided to walk away.
6. Keep believing, it is
not impossible – hard work pays off
After 1,5 months of intense apartment hunting,
less than 2 weeks before we were going to be thrown on the streets, we finally
found a nice apartment. Spending hours every day browsing through the ads,
wasting time visiting crappy apartments, with owners or agencies that either
didn’t bring the right key (this actually happened twice) or didn’t show up at
all. It can be very frustrating, but it is a battle you can win. And when you do, celebrate! You got an awesome apartment
in BARCELONA!
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