[Paisleychick-lj] Apartment Hunting

[Beatrice M's blog]

[![][1]][2]   
[Maria & Javier][3]   
Originally uploaded by [blmurch][4]. 

Renting a long-term apartment in Buenos Aires is not easy. Because people are so very used to being screwed any which way from Sunday, there's a lot of paperwork to be able to rent an apartment. Squatters' rights are strong here and it's hard and takes **a long time** to evict people when they don't pay their rent. So, in order to make sure that the landlords get paid, you need a _guarantia_. This guarantia is basically like a [lien][5] on a property that only comes into effect if you default on your rent. Usually, if you're Argentine, it's your parents house. You can have a guarantia of any property, but of course, landlords prefer to have the property in the _Capital Federal_ - the city of Buenos Aires proper. I imagine that it's because it's easier for them to get to the people involved and get their money. This proves a bit of a Catch-22 for people who aren't from Argentina and who don't have family here. For example, us. You can buy guarantias, but it's sketchy and landlords don't really like using them. You can also negotiate to pay several months' rent up front. The interesting thing is that the places that we have looked at which are cheaper only want guarantias, but the more expensive places are more willing to negotiate. Seems a bit backwards to me, but what do I know. A lot of land lords also want to see pay-stubs to know that you have a source of income. We don't have that either. I know that everything can be negotiated, but it's just overwhelming and neither one of us really looks forward to the task of getting this done. Also, thus far, none of the more than a dozen places we have visited this month have called to me and since the leases are normally for two years, I'm being picky.  
  
Renting a shot-term apartment is fairly easy. It has become very popular for people to have furnished apartments that are then rented out, by the week, or the month to tourists. They are able to charge much more because tourists can afford to pay more. For tourists, it's more economical than staying in a hotel, and you have your own privacy, and you get more of a local feel. For almost all the time that we have been here (except when we were house-sitting for Coppola and brief hostel-stays) we have rented short-term apartments: one in San Telmo, one in Recoleta (rented twice), and our current one in Retiro. It's great, but they're not permanent and it's more expensive than we know we can get, so that nags at us. I am looking forward to having our own place. I want to put a picture up on the wall dammit!  
  
In order to find long term rentals, we've mainly been checking out the newspapers and looking at the classified and trying to decipher the Spanish abbreviations. That's hard. Vocab words we don't know shorted into non-words. Um yeah. We've been able to decode most of them, but some of them still befuddle us. Also, most of the apartments are being listed by _inmobiliarias_ who want 2-months commission. While the monthly rent that we are looking at spending is not *that* much in the grand-scheme of things, it's still money we'd rather not spend. Enter _[soloduenos.com][6]_. This is where owners list their properties for rent - commission free. This weekend we found about a dozen properties that we would like to check out. Monday we looked at [one near Belgrano][7], and for the first time I saw a place that I want to live in. This is a new apartment complex with 8 apartments in two buildings. There are four different apartments that are available for rent and they are similar to each other, but different enough that there's no clear winner. My favorite was on the 1st floor (Argentine 1st floor / US 2nd floor) and was street side. It has a large astro-turf deck over the garage just off the front of the living room, whereas the others have pretty wide balconies from the living room & bedroom. The kitchens are all open into the living room where there's a wall, but a large cut out so that there's a counter between the rooms. This is fantastic for entertaining. The bedrooms are generous in size and there's tons of light. Also, not only do they have bathtubs, which is very close to a deal-killer for me if there isn't one, BUT they're all double jacuzzi heart-shaped tubs. The apartment that is on the top floor of the front building is gorgeous too because has the wooden roof as the ceiling. This poses the problem though that it's hot. BUT, we could see the sunset over the city. Of course, we would get air conditioning, but it would take a lot of energy to bring the temperature down because there's no insulation - it's just the roof. There's also a swimming pool in the back garden and and a _parrilla_ - BBQ which everyone can use. This is the first place that I WANT to live in. It's on the expensive side of rent + expenses = just under U$800/month. But, when I think back to what we were paying in San Francisco, I'm amazed. The neighborhood is residential with businesses around. It's to the west of Belgrano, so far away from down-town, but it's a couple of blocks away from the train station which takes you downtown in 10 minutes or so. There's a nearby train, but it's not that loud. In fact the whole place wasn't that loud which I really liked and was surprised by. Unfortunately, [iPlan][8] doesn't have fiber optic cable there, but we could get cable or ADSL, but those kind of suck. We're going to see more places this week, but I am happy that we have at least one place that I want to live. I feel a bit better about the whole thing and happy that we've (I've) been so picky.  


   [1]: http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2181/2048830207_77e250e826_m.jpg
   [2]: http://www.flickr.com/photos/blmurch/2048830207/ (photo sharing)
   [3]: http://www.flickr.com/photos/blmurch/2048830207/
   [4]: http://www.flickr.com/people/blmurch/
   [5]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lien
   [6]: http://www.soloduenos.com.ar
   [7]: http://soloduenos.com.ar/Ficha.asp?Tipo=2&Id=61474
   [8]: http://www.iplan.com.ar/

URL: http://paisleychick.livejournal.com/326987.html