Apartment hunting in Paris

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Paris is a city of light and dreams. Artists and authors, great minds and the people who followed them have all made this city their home. And yet there is only, and will always only ever be, room for 2 million of these minds to live here at any one time. Because of the history, there is rarely new construction, and because of the city walls, there cannot be any expansion. All of this means that finding a piece of it to call home is very, very difficult.

Like San Francisco or Manhattan, Paris real estate is highly prized and priced accordingly. Last time I lived here I was lucky to find my wonderful little room for next to nothing (9 hours of babysitting a week in exchange for 9 square meters). This time around, things are different. I am no longer a student, and as such, not privy to the myriad of deals and special offers that abound. I am also living with my significant other, and 9 square meters just isn't going to cut it.

When I arrived, Guillaume had settled in to a lovely apartment in Issy-les-Moulineaux, where I am currently sitting and writing right now. Three large rooms, and a kitchen big enough for two, but alas, it was too good to be true. Because we are currently subletting and the entire contract will be rewritten September 5th, the agency has seen fit to raise the rent from the 900/month Adil and Salima paid to over 1200/month for the new tenants. That places it a bit out of our price range, and thus the new tenants will not be us.

I took to the internet and the streets to find us a new place to call home. Most Paris apartments are rented through an agency, but if you can avoid an agency then by all means, do! They will take a deposit (caution) that, like in the states, is refundable only in theory, as well as often exorbitant fees (honoraires), which are non-refundable and, as Guillaume sarcastically calls it, "your gift to the agency for all their work" (they really don't do much except charge for being a middle-man). We wanted to avoid the agencies if we could, and so I turned to pap.fr, "Particulier à particulier", a site where the proprietaires (landlords) post directly to the renters and no one gets ripped off by the middle man.

So I had a site, and with it, some leads, what next? Well, considering it's France, what do you think? I'll let you guess... If you guessed "Paperwork!" then you've got it! In order to get an apartment in France NOT in exchange for labor or due to connections, then you need what is called a "dossier". A dossier consists of your last 3 months salary receipts, your last taxes, your work contract, copies of your ID, and if you really want to impress, the references from your last landlord, your last rental contract and your electricity bill. All must be French, no foreign taxes or salaries are accepted. If you do not make at least 3 times the rent in salary, you will also need a garant (co-signer), usually a parent, but always someone who is a property owner in France. Don't you just love bureaucracy?

If you are foreign and reading this thinking "oh dear, how will I ever make my Paris dream a reality?" do not despair! There are options. One of them is to be very, very wealthy and buy property. Like all private property transaction, if it is obvious you can pay for it, then you can have it. If you don't mind living with others, you can look for a "colocation", some of which put you as a sub-letter on someone else's rent, or sometimes are just with landlords who are very foreigner friendly. Also, if you are young, you can always be an Au Pair and exchange baby sitting for a room, as I did last time. If your job is relocating you to Paris, then they will probably help you find something or perhaps even already have something for you. Some agencies will work with foreigners, but they will charge you even more. There are options, but the best one would still be having a lot of money (this will also help with your visa application).

Luckily for me, Guillaume is French and possesses the necessary documents to move forward in the search. I had a complete dossier, the next step was to make as many apartment visits as possible and hope someone accepted our dossier from the stack of dozens that they collect over the course of a day. Many landlords will open the apartment only on a specific day or weekend for only a few hours at a time. There are usually lines of people waiting to see it and you must wait your turn. You can try to make a good impression and hope that your dossier stands out (ie you have the highest salary of everyone there), but in the end it's a crap shoot. If the apartment looked remotely livable, I handed in the dossier, because, like job hunting, apartment hinting in Paris is a numbers game. And a luck game. So more like gambling, really. (Though after the job hunting experience I and my fellow recent graduates have gone/been going through, I'd say that's pretty much a gamble too).

I happened to have the lucky streak, or at least the "great-timing" streak. Waking up every morning I would check pap.fr and call any apartment that sounded nice. After seeing a studio or two, I decided that Guillaume and I need at least a 2 room, which significantly cut down on the options that fell within our price range. Everything that came up was in the far north-east of Paris (18th, 19th and 20th arrondisements), which was difficult as Guillaume works in the south-west (Boulogne). Then one morning there were listings for apartments in the 15th (south-west), 2 rooms, in our price range! I jumped on it like Paula Deen jumps on a butter-and-bacon stock-up sale. The proprietaire answered and told me to come by immediately, he was only showing the apartment that morning until noon. He liked the dossier and when I called back that afternoon, we had an apartment! After 3 weeks of trecking all over Paris, standing in line and handing out personal financial information like candy, I had done it! A little piece of Paris to call home.

We get the keys this afternoon, and we'll be moving our furniture in this weekend. He said we could paint if we want, and I really want to! Once we're settled in, I ll get some pictures up. A place of our own that we can really make our own, and with two rooms, who knows? Maybe you can come some weekend and make it yours for a while too!

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