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Finding an apartment for rent in Italy

Finding an apartment for rent in Italy

DELIKAKTUS

We have put together a list of recommendations for those looking for an apartment to rent. This post refers to Turin but the same recommendations apply to all of Italy.

Contents
  1. How to prepare?
  2. How to avoid scams?
  3. How to find an apartment?
  4. How to visit apartments?

Warning!
Do not transfer money in advance for any rental contract before you see the apartment in person, meet the owner or the legal property manager and receive the keys and the signed contract in your hand.

How to prepare?

Before and while searching for an apartment make sure to complete any basic paperwork that landlords may require, such as:

Visa permit

In Italian: “permesso di soggirno“, is a document that needs to be requested at least a few months before you actually travel to Italy to look for an apartment. Before you get this don’t waste your time on a standard apartment search.

Fiscal code

In Italian: “codice fiscale“, is an official certificate that must be presented in the original version printed on paper and signed. It is your new Italian identification code that would be requested in each and every office in Italy, and is mandatory for verifying your identity and the landlord identity as well when signing a legal rental contract.

University admission letter

If you move for studies you should take advantage of the priority that landlords give to students, as they get financial incentives for that from the state and the municipality.

Proof of financial means

A bank statement for at least 12 months back, a job contract, your employer paychecks or any other document that shows that you can afford to pay the rent for the long term and are not a hobo would jump you to the top of the list of applicants.

European bank account

Your bank account credentials are written down in the rental contract. Some landlords would demand a bank account within the EU or even (rarely) specifically from Italy. It would also be the best way to pay the deposit fee (“deposito cauzionale” or “caparra di affitto“) and the rent (“canone di locazione” or “affitto mensile“) using a free EU transfer (SEPA) to avoid any fees associated with an international transfer and to have a future proof for you and for your landlord of the the payments that were made. This is more difficult to do when paying in cash, therefore it is not recommended. If you still don’t have one, we wrote a whole article that explains how you can open an EU bank account within a few minutes.

How to avoid scams?

In general we advise you to treat any rental offer with alert caution as if it is a scam. Any warning signs should trigger your caution, but make sure to communicate with the utmost respect as these ads might still turn out to be legit. We hereby list a few basic methods to avoid the most common scams.

Identify fake profiles

The most common scam is someone from abroad that uses a fake profile on a social media such as Facebook. They usually run in parallel to many scams around the world to utilize efficiently their fake profile and to keep it alive as long as they can.

By simply scrolling through their personal profile you can tell about when it was created, and discover that it is less then a year ago. The profile characteristics of such a fake account are typically one of the following:

  • Old lady –
    • living abroad in a rich western country;
    • studied in a university named after the city of birth
    • friends with about 100-200 other fake profiles;
    • posting random quotes of an observing christian, racing cars, motorbikes, food, holiday or sunset without any good explanation.
  • Sexy young women –
    • living abroad in a rich western country;
    • studied in a university named after the city of birth
    • friends with about 100-800 other fake profiles or poor people that were fooled by this profile;
    • posting random photos of racing cars, motorbikes, vacation with minimal clothing without any good explanation.

These kind of profile are intended to give false confidence in the first case or to simply distract men in the second case.

Never transfer money upfront

A demand to pay any introductory fee is a scam by definition. Do not pay a single cent before you:

  • visited the apartment;
  • have in hand a signed contract;
  • made a photo yourself of the original landlord’s ID which was presented to you when meeting with them in person;
  • received the keys that you saw yourself opening that apartment door.

Ask for the address

You should never mention the location of the apartment that was mentioned in the ad when contacting suspicious profiles. If they ask “to which ad you are referring to” just write something vague such as “the one for rent near the train station and university” or “the apartment in the center“, but don’t mention the neighborhood, city or country. If they rent out more than one and they do not identify as a real estate agency then this is probably a scam.

Visit the apartment

There will be a million logical explanations for telling you that it is not possible to visit the apartment before signing the rental contract, but the simple fact is that the apartment does not exist at all in real life. Any real apartment you must be able to visit in person, and probably dozens of other apartment seekers have already seen it on the same day in which it was advertised.

If you ask to talk to the landlord by phone/WhatsApp/Skype and there is no such option it might be because you are corresponding with the fraud center 24/7.

However, if you managed to schedule a visit appointment go and see the apartment in reality. This is the best and only way to avoid imaginary apartments.

Report scams

Report scams wherever you encounter such. May it be on an ads board or on the social media, report that scam to the admins of that platform in order to help cleaning them from fraudulent members.

How to find an apartment?

1. Search from Italy

a.) If you haven’t found an apartment through friends or through local online social groups, book temporary accommodation in Turin for the search period of about 2-4 weeks. This is the typical period it takes to find an apartment for rent in a large city. It is the only way to contact the ads and to visit the apartments offered for rent before they are snatched from the market, mostly within a couple of days.

b.) Temporary accommodation can be with friends, an AirBNB apartment or a hotel, but in any case book a period of at least a week because otherwise you will waste your time looking for accommodation for the next night and moving between apartments.

c.) For the search period, travel light weight. Later, bring what you really need and haven’t found yet in the city (hint: you’ll find everything here, best is to look for second hand shops).

2. Apply in fluent Italian

Italians are racist, but at least they are upfront about it. As new immigrants we have to lower the level of anxiety from foreigners, and the simplest way to do so is by communicating in fluent Italian. Keep in mind that most Italians don’t speak English at all.

a.) It is important to automatically translate (i.e. Google Translate) every written message of correspondence with the apartment owners as well as with real estate agents and the authorities whenever needed. It will take you just a few more seconds but will increase x100 times the probability that you’ll receive a friendly reply if any.

b.) When you contact landlords to schedule meetings and whenever you visit an apartment in person, make sure to come with a friendly (!) fluent Italian-speaking mediator to translate the words, hand gestures and subtext.

c.) You better use the help of locals. If you have a friend or even a nice new acquaintance who already lives in Italy since a couple of years, these could be the ones to communicate in Italian on your behalf. Local social groups are a great place to ask for such help. You might find there kind volunteers or those who will be willing to help you for a fee.

If you are still looking for help in finding your next home in Turin we would be happy to assist you in person.

3. Flex your requirements

Facebook is a convenient tool but it is unlikely that you will find your dream apartment there. However, it is very helpful to bring one to the understanding that the problem is just for us, but rather that there is an extremely limited supply of good apartments in respect to the number of apartment seekers, so we have to compromise a bit on the characteristics of our first apartment in Italy.

a.) Start with the list of your favorite areas, but expand the scope to other areas that still satisfy you. By bike or by the underground metro cities feel much smaller than if you plan to walk or use any other unreliable means of public transport in Italy.

b.) The monthly budget is not so flexible for most of us. However, remember that in life everything is temporary and the longer you live in a city, the more opportunities you get to find a more suitable apartment.

c.) Think carefully with yourself what your threshold requirements are and rank the apartment characteristics by what’s most important for you. “Amazing apartment!” according to your friends is not necessarily the home that suits you best.

4. Maintain an orderly follow-up list

a.) Write down on a digital table in dedicated columns the main details of each rental ad, as well as the status of your application, such as: “Visited and waiting for a draft of the contract”, “Scheduled for Wednesday”, “Did not answer the phone since October”,”No longer relevant” etc.

b.) Mark ads that are no longer relevant and move them to the end of the list even to a separate sheet. Do not delete the irrelevant ads completely from the list. There are many duplicate online ads and a quick scroll through these could save you a lot of time and embarrassment, especially if you tend to forget the details.

5. Be hopeful but turn to the desperate first

In all of the large cities in Italy there is a large pool of apartments to choose from at a more or less reasonable condition. Nevertheless, real estate agents have enough apartment seekers lined-up so they have no special interest in us. Therefore these tend to lack any respect to our time and might come an hour late to a pre-scheduled appointment or even skip the meeting altogether.

a.) When screening to private individuals and excluding the agencies the query suddenly includes apartments at reasonable prices and responses are kinder.

b.) When digging into the last few pages of each of the online housing board websites and calling a few weeks old ads, one discovers a whole new world of tangible offers like the apartment which I finally rented in the center of Turin.

6. Diversify your search but start with the most prominent means

a.) Be upfront with local acquaintances about your apartment search. If a friend or any person which you have met in real life offers you an apartment, go visit it. Even if you prefer a different apartment, this apartment would give you an excellent reference point for comparison and a fallback if all else fails.

b.) In Facebook’s Marketplace as well as its housing groups there is a harsh and discouraging competition, and these have proven to be a waste of time and a magnet for scams. However, “expats” groups are a wonderful way to begin our assimilation among the locals and to connect with those who have already lived in the city for a while. Sometimes it helps to take action and post a housing search post in a cozy local group, but “SHALL NOT SPAM“.

c.) Toggle through the different parameters in the search engines, and ease your requirements only after you have addressed all the ads in the narrower strict search.

d.) The spacial search can be more accurately defined by choosing from the neighborhoods checklist and on some sites you can even draw your exact search area on a map. As with all other criteria, start with a narrow list of the “perfect” zones and after going through all the relevant ads there broaden the search to other acceptable neighborhoods.

e.) Below are the searches that we configured during our two weeks intensive apartment search in Turin. You just have to adjust the city and parameters to the whatever suits you:

How to visit apartments?

If you really want to nail it and get the apartment there are a few tips to bare in mind:

  1. Make sure to visit yourself the neighborhoods that you consider before even looking through ads, at day, night, weekend and working times. That way you understand if the coolest place in the city transforms at night to a source of noise or in extreme cases to a criminal hub. Try to look for the nearby street, that is located well enough but is more quiet and secure.
  2. It is better to schedule apartment visits to times of daylight, although it is very worthwhile to go in front of the apartment also at night when the creeps crawl out.
  3. Wear the same clothing that you would choose for a job interview. Italian dress code is pretty demanding, formal and not casual at all. If you have doubts it is better to overdress.
  4. Bring with you all the prepared documents that we mentioned above.
  5. Come with a local to communicate in fluent Italian for you, to understand the terms of rent and actually get to sign the rental contract on this apartment.
  6. Any Italian meeting starts with an extremely long informal conversation. You must actively participate in the chitchat and smile throughout the meeting. This is the Italian way to validate you as trust worthy business partner, and if you pass this screening process you might get this apartment or even something better, e.g. new friends, a job or just a useful locals tip.

Be ready to sign the rental contract on the spot, as it might be the case when you get lucky.

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