Chez Panda

WE'RE SO EXCITED!

We found an apartment! For the 9 months we will be living in Paris, you'll be able to find us on Rue de Belleville:

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Located in the 19th arrondisement, Belleville is close enough to the center of Paris to be convenient but not too close to be out of our price range. [Speaking of the center of Paris, did you hear about the guy who bought a parking spot for $654,000!?]

You can read about Belleville online (this podcast and blog in particular), but the short story is that it's a diverse neighborhood composed of many different immigrant groups (more Chinese, Thai and Vietnamese in the eastern part ("our" part), more North Africans and Arabs in the western part (a few blocks away)). There are tons of great supermarkets with super cheap Asian food, and on the nearby Rue Rebeval are many up-and-coming gourmet restaurants. Many people seem to point out that the area isn't your typical, "picture-perfect" Parisian quartier, but I'm more inclined to see it as a preview of what the future holds (for Paris and elsewhere). And in any case, there are plenty of fine, local boulangeries and patisseries, which is all we really care about.

As for our apartment, it's a recently refurbished one-bedroom with its own private courtyard garden and parking space. Go ahead, check it out!

The red, leather loveseat converts into a single bed, and we'll probably pick up an air mattress so we can host more than one person at a time. We hope you'll come visit!

Flip Side

Sure, we need to find an apartment in Paris - but we also need to find a subletter for our room while we're away. To that end, we've finally gotten around to taking some pictures and posting an ad on Craigslist. Check it out! Tell your friends!

(Maggie brought this bedspread back from China!)

Finding Apartments II - Craigslist Scams

I'm a big fan of Craigslist - I've bought a bike, a bookshelf, and a rain barrel through it; I've also found piano students through it. But so far it's been terrible for finding an apartment in Paris. Out of seven emails I've sent, five or six have come back as probable scams. How do I know they're scams? I don't, really. But the below apartment should not be listed at 800 euro, and the owner should probably be in town if he really wants to rent me the place.

More interesting is the pattern that I've noticed in emails I've received back from inquiries. Check out this one, which is downright scary:

Some of this information seems relevant to someone renting their apartment, but address? religion? how many months can you pay upfront? Seriously???

The pattern becomes even more obvious with this next email:

Now, Maggie and I don't want anyone accusing us of being anti-West African missionaries. But surely you'll agree that there's something fishy about all of these appartements chouettes that are surprisingly cheap being rented out by people who 1) can't be around to show you the place, 2) have recently moved to West Africa, and 3) don't care when you move in/represent the apartment as always available.

In conclusion:

1. If the price is too good to be true, it's probably not true.
2. Stick to French-language sites (like pap.fr or fusac.org).
3. NEVER agree to send a deposit without having had someone see the apartment for you.
4. Consider finding your place through an agency (which will charge a fee), which saves you the trouble of figuring out which ads are scams and which are legitimate.

Finding Apartments I - Useful Websites

In our search for an apartment, we're getting lots of helpful tips on where to look. Here are a number of websites that we're using:

http://paris.en.craigslist.org/apa/- I'll post more on Craigslist later, since so far we've seen nothing but scams. But supposedly it's possible to find a real apartment on it, so we'll see.

fusac.org - an expat website (stands for France USA Contacts) and extension of a print magazine that offers classifieds in all sorts of categories. Kind of an old-school Craigslist.

pap.fr - "Particuliers a particuliers" - as far as I can tell, this is a "rent by owner" website that helps you avoid paying the agency fees that come with a lot of Parisian rentals.

http://www.h-france.net/housingdigest.html - This is an academic listserve that sends out housing offers once a week.

sabbaticalhomes.com - that's right: people on sabbatical needing a home, and people on sabbatical leaving a home. All academia, all the time!

http://paris.kijiji.fr/  - no idea. yet.

www.leboncoin.fr - no idea. yet.

http://www.seloger.com/ - a general French apartments site. 

I'll make sure to update this list as we learn of new websites and as we explore the ones listed here more thoroughly. Also, look for another post very soon on the dangers of Craigslist ads. 

Throw a dart, find an apartment

A lot of people have been asking us if we know yet where we're going to live next year.

The short answer is, no. 

The longer answer is, we have some leads, and in a few weeks we'll start emailing friends in the hopes of getting some new leads. 

In the meantime, here's a map of Paris. Where do you think we should live?

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