Visa-vis Part 2:
Finding a Place to Live
This is part of our Visa-vis collection where we
talk about applying for our long-term visitor visas for France.
by Vincent
Chickens & eggs, oh my!
As part of applying for a French long-term visitor visa (and I’m sure other visas), the consulate requires the following documentation:
Proof of accommodation in France (title deeds, lease or rental agreement)
OK, that’s nice. I have to provide a rental agreement before I even know if I can go to France? Sounds super easy! Just kidding. It sounds impossible.
The easy way out
If it was easy for us, I wouldn’t be writing this post. For others, there is an easy way to do this if you’ve got the means: go to France before you apply for your visa and find an apartment. (Or marry a French person). This was the advice we received from others on expat groups and forums. Unfortunately, this was not feasible and really is kind of unreasonable to assume everyone can do this. Tickets to France aren’t cheap and if you’ve been saving up for a trip of your lifetime, every dollar counts.
Step 1: Decide on a place to live
Originally, we had planned to live in Paris, as Céleste pointed out in the first part of this series. When the work visa went out the door, it opened up the possibility to live somewhere else.
We had been to France before (it’s where I proposed to Céleste) and we both loved the south, near Marseille and Nice. Paris is really cool and has this “metropolitan” feel but you can’t beat the sights and sun of the south. Also, people from France will tell you the French in the south are nicer—they will also never fail to mention the southerners hate Parisians. We can’t exactly confirm this because during our previous trip everyone we met was nice but that might just be because Céleste is fluent in French and I kept my mouth shut.
Given our proclivities for the south and the desire to not be directly in the middle of such a large city as Marseille, we settled on the “suburb” of Aix-en-Provence which itself is not a small city by our mid-western standards. After spending some time in Google StreetView, we really liked what we saw.
Step 2: Find a friend
We started looking at housing seriously 6 months before our departure goal (mid-December). We didn’t know where to begin so we did something crazy: we asked other people!
We used Meetup search for local groups and were surprised to find a large group of expats in Aix. Bingo! We sent out a plea to the list: does anyone have any advice on finding housing for long-term rental?!
To our amazement, we got a ton of responses. Everyone was pretty supportive, offered advice, and wished us luck. A few people sent us the same tip: if you can, just visit beforehand and find an apartment. Like I said above, if we had the funds this is what we would have done but we just couldn’t afford to do that.
Through the group we became penpals with someone who was from Aix and who actually had lived in the US for awhile. We also got a response from a couple from our city who lived in Aix for a couple years. We met up with them at a local coffee shop and wouldn’t you know it—they knew the other fellow we met from the Meetup group personally! It really is a small world.
We exchanged emails back and forth about what neighborhoods to look at and our needs—furnished apartment, close to the city centre, etc. Our penpal helped answer our questions and gave us some tips on finding a place to live. Moreover, it gave us some hope—by having someone who lives there, we could see if they’d be willing to check on apartments for us once we picked one out. This turned out to be one of the biggest benefits but I’ll get to that after the next bit.
Step 3: Find housing
This is the hardest part and we can only tell you what worked for us in the hopes you encounter the same success.
First, here’s what didn’t work:
- Going through local classifieds and emailing people—didn’t pan out
- Going through local apartments that were up for rent—we got a few leads from real estate agents but none that suited our requirements
Leboncoin was basically the equivalent of emailing people on Craigslist. It may have worked out but I didn’t know French and I was the one doing most of the research—bless her heart, Céleste was doing everything else so it was the least I could do. We also didn’t really receive any replies ☹
The second approach bore more fruit. SeLoger is a great apartment site, essentially the same as Apartments.com for the US and we found a couple agents who were willing to look into openings for us. However, just like here in the US, you really were only going to find openings closer to people’s move-out dates—since we were looking months in advance, this was close to impossible and we didn’t want to wait until the last minute, especially since we couldn’t even apply to the consulate without a lease or promise of a lease.
And then…
…I found Homeaway. Well, it’s French version (Abritel).
This site is excellent. It was meant for tourists and people looking for long-term vacation rentals. It lets landlords rent directly and you can even pay in advance all online for short stays. Furthermore, the landlords are used to dealing with erratic schedules and tourists.
Here are some tips:
- Learn the lingo: T2/T3 means 2/3 rooms (=1BR/2BR), centre ville means town center (i.e. where the action is, it’s usually noisier), “calm/quiet” means no parties late at night, and watch out for per week rates (par semaine)
- Filter by Long-Term Renters Welcomed (appréciations vacanciers) and look for “furnished” (meublé) apartments
- Even if an apartment isn’t marked “LT renters welcomed”, ask. We found many landlords willing to rent longer—and why wouldn’t they? They’re making a pretty penny off us so they should want to have guaranteed rent for a long time.
- When you send landlords messages, include your requested dates, that you’re applying for a visa, and anything else you might want to know about the apartment
- Everything is in the metric system, if you’re unsure how to translate a number into something more familiar, use Google—hint: everything’s tiny unless you’re rich or live outside the city
After only sending messages to a few nice-looking apartments, we started receiving responses. We followed up with two landlords who looked promising and had good reviews. The one apartment we found looked perfect—right in the thick of Aix’s old town. We communicated via email until we felt pretty sure we’d be choosing the apartment and then we Skype’d to make sure this was real (it’s too good to be true, right?). No, she was real—and spoke great English. She answered all our questions, took extra photos, and gave us a list of all the things that were included in the apartment. It was over our initial budget but it was a good location and we weren’t sure if we could find a better deal.
This is where having someone you trust in France really helps (see Step 2). In order to start the leasing process we asked her if it’d be alright if we had our “friend” in Aix come meet her and take a look himself at the apartment. She had no problems with this. Our acquaintance was more than happy to do this for us and he sent us more pictures as well as his honest assessment—it was small but a good apartment. We expected it to be small—it’s only 350 square feet. That’s less than half the size of our current 1BR+den apartment. A closet, essentially.
After his nod of approval, we said we’ll take it! But what did that entail?
Step 4: Payments and the Lease
Now that you’ve decided on a place to live and the landlord is agreeable, you need to work with them to draw up a lease—in English and French, if possible. Our landlord gave us both versions and we checked to ensure the terms were the same on both (there were slight differences). We also worked with her to add a clause saying if we weren’t approved for the visa we wouldn’t pay for any months we actually weren’t there—you don’t want to be stuck paying for an apartment you can’t even be at and the visa is a wildcard; either you’re approved or you’re not and you won’t know until a couple months before you plan to leave, as long as you apply early (minimum of 3 months before departure date). If you don’t know French, have someone else look over the leases—such as the friend you made in Step 2.
We paid for the rent via PayPal. That was another benefit going through a landlord, we didn’t need to open a French bank account or do an international wire. PayPal’s fee for an international payment from your checking account is surprisingly cheap—it was only about 4 euros. Paying via credit card has a much higher fee so I don’t recommend it. Since we have a true Chip + PIN card, we’re all set—no friction finances while we’re abroad.
Once we had agreed that the leases were in order—we waited. And waited.
By this time we were about 3 months out and things were all coming together. You have to understand there were two things waiting to be approved—my telecommuting arrangement and our visa. The former should have been taken care of long before this but so it goes (protip: get HR and Legal involved way in advance).
We hoped to wait for my employer before signing the lease but our landlord was getting restless—and we didn’t blame her. We were lucky she was so understanding and was willing to wait for us. After thinking on it for a week or two, we promised her at the very least we’d be staying 3 months because that’s how long you can stay without a visa (90 days). She was fine with this arrangement so we sent her the deposit (equivalent to a month’s rent) and the first month’s rent (December). This was our assurance that yes—we’re very serious and are definitely willing to rent. We told her we could still be denied visas—but at least we’d rent for 3 months.
It was a hectic and stressful few weeks of wondering if I would get the green light and whether we’d lose the apartment due to the delay. In the end, the stars aligned, the sun appeared from behind the clouds, and my work approved the arrangement and we scheduled our visa appointment.
Now it was time to drive to the consulate and actually apply. I’ll let Céleste tell you about that experience in the next post.
Follow Aix Squared to stay-up-to-date with our experiences while in France. This post is part of our series on applying for a visa, Visa-vis.
