Renting Accommodation

General Discussion
1

Dear All,


First I have to say what a pleasant surprise this site is. My wife and I have been in France for exactly one month. Green and naïve to a fault, we arrived in France on the 1st November full of hope and anticipation and racked by concerns and worries.


We had heard already of the dreaded French Civil Service (who were anything but civil) and the bureaucracy that attaches to anything you have to do to live and breath in France. We have now met both, but still feel it was the right decision to pack up in England and move here to begin a new chapter in our lives.


So far you kind people have helped us to gain a Carte Grise (easy peasy once you get the hang of queueing and mind reading French civil servants who refuse to utter one word of English to assist), we very nearly have a French bank account, we also have French lessons booked for the new year. thank you for you advice and guidance on all these issues.


Next big challenge is finding permanent rented accommodation. We are currently staying in the Park & Suites in St Jean d'Illac near Bordeaux. A six-month let on a holiday home - but it was all we could manage to find back in September when we first came across looking to find a place to stay. It's fine but we now need to find permanent quarters as soon as possible.


So this is again a cry for help and assistance.


we are looking for a house or low-rise apartment in Bordeaux. Three beds if possible and we would by preference want somewhere in Merignac or Le Bouscat, or anywhere near a tram line in the suburbs.


Max rent we would want to pay is around the €900-950 mark.


We already have the Sud-Ouest website, and have begun to trawl immobilieres in the areas we want. Our lack of French language is an issue of course, but the fact that we are still on a short term contract in a holiday village is also an issue it seems. We will have a bank account very soon and already have a RIB to show / give people.


We think renting privately might be an answer (hence part reason for this post), but are not really sure how to go about finding 'particulaires' who want to rent accom.


Would be fantastic to find someone on here looking to rent a place, but I think that may be overly optimistic thinking.


So if anyone has advice, guidance, observations regarding renting accommodation in Bordeaux or France, please let us know.


Thanks very much in advance.


Shaun and Ness

2

Any landlord is likely to want to know what you are living on & what their chances of getting their rent OK are as it is hard to get rid of tenants, I'm not implying anything about you, I'm just telling you why landlords can be a bit picky - I'd suggest going in person to one or more of the agencies in the centre of Bordeaux once you've had a look online to give you an idea of what is on offer & for how much, and having a chat about what you want. Get your bank account sorted first though as you will get short shrift if you haven't got one & all the rest of your paperwork. Good luck.

3

I will ask my daughters landlady (in Le Bouscat) if she knows of anything :)

4

If you chuck this into Google, Shaun :

location particulier bordeaux merignac le bouscat

you get quite a few sites to trawl through. In French o'course, though should not be too difficult to suss them out.

Sure is a great site here, glad to know you're easing the pain by being here :)