We've spent a good amount of time learning about our new home. We've come across a bunch of really helpful resources that I would like to share. Most are websites relating to apartment searches, but I'll start with something put out by the American Church in Paris. This church does a really good job of helping Americans (and other expats) acclimate themselves to Paris. One of these resources is a housing/job/classifieds board that is posted twice a week at the Church. We heard about it many times before moving here, and Jeff checked it regularly during his trips to Paris. However, we found that most of the listings for apartments were for small studio or 1 bedroom flats...not families of 6!
An organization within the church called the Women of the American Church published a book called Bloom Where You're Planted - How to Live in France. The price is 20 euros and it is definitely worth the price. It is even better if you have the book BEFORE moving to Paris, but still a good book to have regardless.
I want to also take a minute to plug a couple of the websites we used in our apartment search. This isn't a comprehensive list, but rather a list of the sites we used the most with some of our comments about the site:
Lodgis.com ($) – Good inventory with good, user-friendly search options. I liked the conversion tools and the ability to call agents by Skype. However, they require expensive deposits and agency fees.
ParisAttitude.com ($) – Good inventory, decent search options. Agents were nice but not very helpful. Not a very easy process with them, and again, expensive agency fees.
LeBonCoin.fr – Really cool site. French use this similar to Craigslist. Some agents still post their listings on here, but the site will let you know if a “pro” is listing the property or not.
Pap.fr – Another pretty good site. This is a bunch of listings by owners only. The positive is that you can find some good deals and properties to look at. The negatives are that few allow you to email them, even fewer show pictures, and even fewer owners speak English. I worked my way speaking with many of them, but in the end it was too much work to try to rent to someone that doesn’t speak French, so I never got very far with any of these owners.
Craigslist.fr – Very similar experience to using pap.fr, although a few more owners spoke English on these listings.
Science-accueil.org – This was a very helpful website with lots of resources for students and professors relocating to Paris. I spoke to about 4 owners here, but we weren’t able to make anything work (nothing big enough for the crazy American with 4 kids!).
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