Househunting

Before I even considered moving to Paris, a coworker of mine who moved from California to Paris told me about his difficulties in finding a place. My information may not be totally accurate, but it would seem that one of the reasons why it's tough to find housing is due to the following factors:

1. If a person rents a place from you, you may not raise the rent during your duration of living there - even if you have lived there for 20 years (no lease is signed).
2. Should you die while you are renting a place, it is possible for you to pass your apartment on to your family (e.g., your wife) so that they can continue to live in the place without a rent increase.
3. It is almost impossible for you to kick out a tenant without them suing you and them actually winning.

For these reasons, the renting environment is like this in Paris:

• Landlords require you provide them with a ton of information before they will rent a place to you - including things like a guarantor who is parisien and owns a house and something like your grandfrather's employment contract. (kidding with the last point, but a lot of info is needed that you wouldnt have imagined)
• A lot of times, it's difficult to find a good apartment unless you know someone who is renting a place out because landlords do not like to rent to ppl they dont know.
• If you are looking up places yourself, you must be monitoring the websites 24-7 because as soon as an ad goes up, a ton of ppl will call right away. If you wait a couple of hours, the landlord/agent will have gotten 100 phone calls already.
• If you happen to get a visitation right to the apartment, you need to get there quick. Preferably within the next few hours. An apartment generally doesnt stay on the market for a couple of days. A good apartment maybe a couple of hours to one day.
• If you do happen to get lucky and found an apartment you want and the landlord is happy with renting it to you, you will need to move in within the week.

Although there are always exceptions, those are the information i received to maintain my expectation. Thus, I was ready. I'm a tad luckier than my coworker because I have an agent paid for by my relocation that helps me look up places, but even then my first day of house-hunting did not go down smoothly. 

First off, the agent is unable to give you a full day's notice on which apartment you will be visiting. The morning of the day we agreed to look at housing, he texted me and told me to meet him at a metro station at 9am. When I got there at 9am, I saw a missed call from him. He called to inform me that the apartment he wanted to take me has been taken off the market.

I waited around the area for another 20 minutes because the agent needed to go secure my second appointment and the dude is not picking up his phone or something so he was going in person. He picked me up and we headed over. Although the other agent said he'd be there in a minute after we got there, he didnt arrive for another 20 minutes while we waited in the cold. The worst part about this was that after the other agent got there, he actually had no idea which unit it was and wandered around like an idiot for quite a bit. When we finally got in, the place was so musky and dated that I immediately know I wasn't gonna be too excited about it. 

Apartment 1:

• 500 sqft
• super dated furniture and smelled musky
• toilet room is literally a closet with a door, while the bathtub area does not have a door
• cannot have a standing shower as showerhead does not have a place to hang
• whooping 1150 euros without internet included

We got out of there pretty quickly, but it was only 11am and we were unable to get an appointment for the next house until 1:15pm so I took the metro back to the hotel and had lunch before meeting with my agent again.

Apartment 2:

• 250 sqft
• sofabed
• very modern and newly renovated living space with potlights on the closets and cabinets
• decent bathroom and kitchen
• a little secluded and quiet (not very lively at all)
• up on hills and you must climb all these weird stairs before you get to the unit
• closest metro is 10 minute walk up and down hills
• closest RER station is down the hill but rather inconvenient
• 1050 euro including everything

Although I really liked apartment 2's living area, I felt like i shouldnt just pick a place without having seen more places. I asked my agent how often he comes across a flat that's this updated and he said about 20% - which means chances are a bit low. Obviously the apartment is not gonna wait until i see more houses before it gets rented out so after some discussion, we decided that we were gonna keep looking and that we might start looking in the 17th arr rather than the 16th, which is very "bourgeois"

And that concludes day 1 of my house hunt. hopefully more to come.