anxieuse abroad

The MOST important thing when arriving in France with a long stay visa is to find a place to live / long-term lease. This is what I heard and read over and over and over. France is famous for it’s bread and wine and cheese, yes, but also for it’s bureaucratic catch-22s where you can’t get a bank account without a utility bill, and you can’t get a bill without a lease or address which you can’t get without a bank account etc. etc. etc. Critically, you must register your visa within 90 days of your arrival and you really want to have a long-term place to live to receive mail and establish residency with the local prefecture.

More than anything else, I was anxious about finding a long-term home when we arrived. It seems like post-Covid, all over the world, rents are high and getting an apartment is competitive. I’ve heard horrible stories about students in Amsterdam not being able to start the school year because they can’t find a place to live, and growing families in Berlin unable to move to a bigger apartment because they can’t find or afford one. I blame AirBnb (in part) but that’s another post.

Once again, I researched for hours and hours about finding apartments in France. And sometimes the advice was contradictory: “You should work with an agency” and “Agencies wouldn’t return my calls” so I don’t know how helpful it is to declare that you must to “this” or “that”. My best advice would be to stay flexible and willing to shift your approach if it’s not working.

I started searching Seloger (the French Zillow) and Leboncoin (the French Craigslist) and set up filters with our parameters which excluded listings from agencies. Honestly, I didn’t want to pay the extra 10% or whatever fee they charged, and have not needed to use one since the Apartment People in Chicago in the early 2000’s. 😱

The key first step, is to create a Dossier Facile application that you then send to a prospective landlord. I was pretty blown away that it was a free service set up through the government, because surely in the US some type of TurboTax bullshit would have taken a service that should have been free to citizens and residents and charged money for it. But it’s legit and free and integral to getting a lease here. You need your passport, bank account info, and visa in addition to some other documents that you’ll likely have readily available from your visa application. It takes a day or so, but once approved, the site creates links that you can then send to prospective landlords showing that you’ve been verified and approved by the French government for a rental.

I created a spreadsheet to track the apartments which included what site I found them on, how big they were, the rent, if they were furnished or not, and if I’d sent a Dossier Facile link. Because the dossier link includes some pretty sensitive info, I wanted to make sure I was keeping track of who I’d sent it to. I’d inquire about an apartment on one of those 2 sites, and if they replied and asked for my employment contract, I’d explain that I didn’t have one but did have a Dossier Facile and send that over instead. I couldn’t find any info online about this being a safe practice or not and it didn’t feel great sending my personal details to someone I’d never met, but it was also clear no one was going to waste their time showing me an apartment if I’d not been validated. I made sure all of my links expired in 7 days, and rescinded them if I was ghosted after a day or two (the spreadsheet was helpful for this!)

We saw a place that first weekend that was great, and said we’d like to take it but didn’t want the garage, which they said was optional. They ended up choosing someone else who wanted it and was able to move in sooner. Which sucked and was disappointing but not surprising. I even won a $100 bet with my spouse who thought they’d choose us and said I was just a pessimist. My takeaway was that if you’re not 100% aligned with what the landlord wants and needs you’re not going to get the place in this market.

So, a bit freaked out and back on the search, a really nice cover photo of a townhouse caught my eye. It was with an agency and had a fee, but the photos were so good I thought “what the hell” and sent an inquiry. To my surprise, the agent wrote back, happened to have an opening in her schedule, and we made an appointment to see it later that day.

It. Was. Beautiful. The owner is a jewelry designer and her attention to detail and color and quality was much higher than most other places we’d seen. I mean, it was crapped up by students — shoes and crumbs and dirty dishes and clothes everywhere, but the agent promised it would be back to the state it was in the photos. I could see the vision. We told her we wanted it, which meant we had to take it 2 weeks earlier than was ideal, but after the loss of the first beautiful apartment I just said, “OK.”

It’s important for me to remember that sometimes, shit does work out. I was SO FREAKED OUT about this one major task and I couldn’t have imagined we’d find such a great place. It’s honestly way nicer than the apartment we left in the US, which was from the late ’80s and came with mold and drain flies. I’ll write another post about the lease and move in and the 97 (yes, ninety-seven) boxes and items that we shipped and are almost finished putting away… in a heatwave.

Featured image: Tina Turner at home by LaDame QUICOLLE