Piso Hunting: A Horror Story
BEFORE
Unbeknownst to me until a month ago is a particular horror that so many first year auxiliares/language assistants are subject to: that of looking for a place to live in Spain. They call it piso hunting but if you’re not careful (read: lucky) it can come out more like the worst couple of weeks of your life. All piso hunting nightmares are different, here is mine:
Early on, seasoned travel bloggers and auxiliary veterans decree never to buy into a space without looking at it first. Taking that message to heart, I arrived in Madrid on Saturday, September 4th at around 1am. I checked into a hotel by the airport for the night (shout-out to Hotel IBIS) and then, after a grueling morning battling jetlag, unfamiliar showers, and locking myself out of my own suitcase, I settled into a sublet on the lovely Meson de Parades for a week while I hunted.
DURING
The search began shortly after. I took to Idealista.com, sorting my search by area and price. There’s actually a really neat tool that lets you draw a map of your specific areas of interest. I was advised to look in the Lavapies/Embajadores areas, which are considered hip and multicultural, not expensive and right near the center of town without being dead in the center of Sol. I dropped as many numbers as I could into my phone (make sure to at the +34 before the number!) and hit up people by the thousands via WhatsApp.
By Monday, I was averaging 5 apartment visits per day. By visits, I mean madness. Landlords seeing 10-30 potential tenants a day. Rooms with no dryers (pretty standard), or no windows (somewhat standard), or whose contracts specified that tenants must make their bed every single day (much less standard). Rooms with no elevators, or whose listings accidentally boasted no toilets. Ritzy Italian landlords peddling maze-like mansions in the financial district, or windowless shitholes on Calle de la Fucar.
It only four days of this to feel I’d reached the end of my rope. I started to switch my searches from Idealista to rooming agencies like uniplaces.com or beroomers.com. Places where “agency fees” for finding the place are half a month’s rent, and you don’t get to look before I buy. And actually, I took the plunge, ready to pay the fee to reserve a space just so I’d have somewhere to live come Sunday. But my booking was rejected due to a technical glitch and I decide to wait it out one more day.
Thursday morning I hopped back onto Idealista. Search after search after search. I’d given up the texting and begun straight calling up landlords, giving the phone to Spanish-speaking friends in a panic when my “Hablas Ingles?” was met with impatient silence.
And finally. I picked up the phone to a “hello?” on the other line. “mi nombre es…wait, you speak English?” “Yes, I do. Are you calling about the room listing?” It turns out, I’d stumbled onto Spanish landlord who contracts his wife’s agency to do some renting out to young ex-pats como yo. They asked me if I’d like to see the place. I said yes, though, since I was very interested in the listing, if there was any way I can see the place right away and possibly even put down a deposit on the spot? “Let me see what I can do,” she said.
An hour later, I was at the space, ready to jump with a hefty deposit in my backpack. The apartment I saw was beautiful and grungy and populated by New Zealanders, Italians, Germans, Americans. My room is windowless, but the living room has a balcony overlooking a rustic side-street right in the center of town. The sun was setting. The breeze was blowing through the red curtains. “I’ll take it,” I say. And that’s the end.
AFTER
I’ll say that piso hunting is a sort of necessary evil that no amount of prep can prepare you for. No landlords responded to my messages before I landed in Madrid. And places were gone within a day anyway, so scoping things out on Idealista weeks in advance did a fat load of nothing, perhaps except get my used to the interface. My Spanish is rotten, so left alone with a landlord, I hardly got a word in edgewise that wasn’t “Me gusta” or “no me gusta” or “muchas otras personas hoy?”
Just another piso hunt in paradise
TIPS
Infuriatingly, at the beginning of my search, so many Spaniards told me “it’ll work out.” But looking back I think that the worrying is exactly what made things work out in the end. No, I didn’t end up with the apartment of my dreams. But I’m a 23 year old American who landed in Madrid for the first time in her life, apartment hunting for the first time anywhere. How could the outcome have been a ten out of ten? But in case you are a newbie out there, tabs open and eyes glued to the screen, here are some things that helped me along the way:
1. Idealista is your friend. WhatsApp is your friend. Calling landlords directly is really really your friend. Try to get someone who knows Spanish on your side who is willing to make a couple of calls on your behalf. You can do this through joining an intercambio (language exchange) or even just booking an AirBnb for the week you arrive. You’ll likely meet someone who is willing and able to lend a hand to a struggling new Madrileno on the ride of their life to find somewhere to unpack their suitcase.
2. Don’t go see places you know aren’t going to work out. Yeah, you’re going to have to make compromises. But seeing a place that is way out of your price range, or doubles your commute to work, is not going to work out in your favor. It’s going to burn you out and stop you from seeing places you are really interested in.
3. Don’t settle too soon. I know I say this having jumped as soon as I could, but I would really say that it’s important not to settle too much. I was about to live in an apartment with literally no windows, where I wasn’t allowed to have any guests, because it was cheap and I was scared. Don’t be scared. Be pro-active. Things work out to those who try, even if it’s just because they begin to smack of desperation.
It’ll work out. I promise.
Piso Hunting: A Horror Story was originally published on Nicnapkin
