Mayan

Hunting for an Apartment (1 Septembre 2006)

When we left for France, we had in mind that we would spend one week searching for an apartment, another organizing our long-stay visas, bank accounts, etc., and the rest of the time doing some traveling until we could meet some people, our friends arrived, and we could start our brand new year. We thought at the end of the first week, we could publish photos of our new place here. So where is it? The plan, as you can see, is not running smoothly. Finding an apartment here is a lot harder than anyone would think.

Firstly, as we have discovered, Aix-en-Provence apartments are famously difficult to find. They are as expensive as Paris, but a lot older, and as competitive as a sculling competition in Munich.

Secondly, there are a lot of crazy rules and procedures to follow to rent an apartment that we didn’t know about, which make it hard for any foreigner to rent a place of their own. This makes colocation (sharing an apartment) choice A, which is really unpopular with estate agents, and for reasons explained later, now with us.

Thirdly, NONE of the estate agents here speak any English. And they NEVER return calls.

In our first week of Aix, we got a glimpse of what the insides of all the beautiful ancient buildings look like. They were great, if you’d like to live in a broom cupboard, or if you don’t mind your shower in the kitchen of a studio apartment, and no light in the tilted bathroom.

We quickly found ourselves stretching our budget in order to try and stretch our home-life to above sub-standard conditions. So, we started looking at two-bedroom apartments that we could try to share (though we did not yet have a flatmate). And we found one that we loved, and it was cheap!!!

So, we called a girl who said she would be interested in flatting with us, named Marion. We met her at the apartment, and later went out for dinner and drinks, keen to finally alleviate the homelessness and hotel bill situation we were currently in. And Marion was also in a rush to find a place. She spoke a bit of English, we speak more French by the day and Marion was about to study in the same place as Sam….it was like a match made in heaven.

The next day, we were keen to settle- so to speak. We kept trying to ring Marion, to no avail. When she texted us to say she wasn’t interested any more, Mayan had a premonition of what was to come. We found out later from the agent that not only had she lied to us about not being interested, but she had made a rendez-vous to see it again…with someone else!! (don’t forget that the two of us had found it in the first place)
It was a decisive moment in our house hunting saga: we were not going to share with anyone at the beginning of the year!!

At the same time as getting over the blow, we had to continue house hunting and also try to find someone who would be our financial guarantor. Note: they have to live in France and earn at least 4 times your rent per month.

A contact of a contact of a contact later, and we had the best guy ever as our guarantor. He was so supportive and helpful and totally reliable even though he was traveling overseas.

Almost every day, we revisited every single agent in the inner city (about 30) and a few outside. Finally, at the end of one day in the second week, with very little drive left, we found a newly reopened out-of-the-way agent with two flats that were exactly what we wanted. The next day, we chose one, checked with our guarantor, everything’s OK, fill in some forms, come back tomorrow. The next day, fill in more forms, pay the fees, waiting on one more, come back next week. The next week, got the form, got the flat? No no no, now we have to clean it, and paint it, and replace some things. Come back IN THREE WEEKS.

Now, the flat was supposed to be ready straight away. We had envisaged a quick move and finally the start of a bit of normality. We’d even bought a pot-plant.

So we were faced with a dilemma: start to search for a different apartment from scratch, stay in our hotel for two more weeks, or go traveling for two weeks. They were all either too depressing or way too expensive to be feasible, and we were pretty angry about the whole fiasco. We investigated our traveling options: Marseille, Cassis, Nice, Paris, Romania, Morocco; everything seemed possible and this is supposed to be the easiest part about Europe, the easy traveling, but it’s really expensive at short notice. Unless you befriend the train’s unpopular, slow cousin: the humble bus. We found two tickets to Spain on an overnight bus and teed up some quality time with Karina.

On our return, at 5am on the morning the cleaning/painting/time wasting would finish, we comforted ourselves while sitting in a freezing restaurant with the idea of getting a day’s worth of moving in before our first guests, Mayan’s parents, arrived that night. We were outside the agency’s door when it opened, with our little hearts just bursting with optimism.

Needless to say, there were dramas. One document was missing, their insurance guy was away, and we had to get thousands of euros together for a bond. Of course, we couldn’t withdraw it in one go, thanks to withdrawal limits, and banks and post offices here can’t give cash advances on credit cards since three years ago. Only one place, a currency exchange office, can do it in all of Aix, and their machine was broken. I tell you all this detail to give some feeling of the frustration we were feeling from the start of the search one month ago to when we finally moved in, at 5 o’clock that evening.

The apartment is great, spacious enough, with a terrace, nice kitchen, new furniture, French windows, and a tall shower. It’s central, secure, and has heating, but no sink plugs. It’s painted in blue and white, and has a red couch (like the French flag). There are two gay bars on the street, and it still smells strongly of paint. And we may be even fonder of it thanks to all the problems we had in finding it.