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Living In Paris: Looking For An Apartment In Paris

My advice for apartment seekers in Paris

🕒 3 min read

Category: Miscellaneous

Tags: apartement, paris, housing

Looking for an apartment in Paris... is a hassle. A lot of demand, too little supply. Not to mention you always - well, almost - need rent guarantors.

First of all, where to look for apartments?

My three favorite ones, that gather ads from many agencies:

Pro tip: enable the alert emails so that you get an email as soon as one ad is posted, or digest emails.

Also, don't forget about agencies' websites. To mention a few:

Arranging a viewing

My tip is to always try to phone them. If no one picks up, them text the person who posted the ad if they wrote their phone number. As a last resort, email them.

In short, the email should look like this:

Once you've arranged a viewing, you should prepare the documents you are going to have to hand in along with the questions you want to ask.

The documents

In Paris, landlords usually expect people to know what documents are required. However, this might drastically vary from one to another. Here is a list of must and optional ones. If you are extremelly well paid you might not need rent guarantors:

Must

Optional but often required

Rarely required

However, never hand in your bank details before officially signing the apartment lease. Some agencies or landlords ask you to hand in these documents during the viewing. But most of the time, sending them over email is fine. Ask beforehand just in case.

Questions to ask during the viewing

Here are a few questions I used to ask:

Keeping track of the apartments you've found and the viewings you've done

I recommend that you create an Excel file to do that. Here is an extract of mine:

That's it! Hope this helps.

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