Renting and finding a flat here in Moscow, is an experience like no other unless you are lucky enough to have it done for you and/or to have your company pay for the rent. We did it ourselves and we had to email many agencies here in Moscow and most of them laughed at our budget or sent us unsuitable flats to view. The tenant (you dear reader) is not the boss or the client, the landlord and flat owner is the boss. You are the idiot that pays them.You will often be shown flats where: the building is awful and damp and the flat is nice or the building is nice and the flat is awful, there is no lift, it looks out onto one of the many 8 lane roads and you will breath in more exhaust fumes than a catalytic converter, or you will be on the 9th floor. You will have to do a lot of leg work and calling to find a flat that meets your "Western" standards, as the Russians call it. Some flats we visited, you had to pass through the kitchen to get to the bathroom or the flat had a great living room, modern kitchen but 1950s style bathroom. Many of the bathrooms have mirrors on the ceilings or bath Jacuzzi from the late 1980's and are quite awful in taste and style. Also Russians, let their flats as they would like them to live in themselves and so are often with vulgar wallpaper rather than in neutral colours for people to rent.
Rent contracts are another jungle to hack through and watch out for, why? Because they are meaningless here. Often, landlords will just increase the rent as and when they like and they will never (except if you are paying a very high rent) fix it for longer than a year. When you visit flats, you may have the agent (yours) that found you the flat, the agent that belongs to the landlord and the landlord so the flat will be crowed while you look. All of which work for the landlord. Your agent gets one months rent from you, the agent of the landlord gets one months rent from the landlord. The agents want as a high a rent as possible so they get as much money as possible so they can buy a new ipad, many of these agents are students. Prices are still crazy here (2009) as rent prices have not fallen very much. High prices, poor quality is the watch word here.
The thing to do is to find a good landlord, if you have bad feelings or doubts about him or her walk away, no in fact run. Your gut feeling could save you a lot of big problems later. Be very careful and the more money you have the better. Start to look early, before you set up home in Moscow and if you have any Russian friends, take them with you to look at flats. Many of the agents speak excellent English and will show you flats any day and at night, they will also drive you to see them. Good luck and be patient and strong.
P.S Hopefully if you are reading this post a lot later than the date it was written, the situation and renting culture in Moscow may have improved from my descriptions above.
P.S Hopefully if you are reading this post a lot later than the date it was written, the situation and renting culture in Moscow may have improved from my descriptions above.
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Hi,
ReplyDeleteWhat you've written is also a sore point for many people in this part of the world. Here in Kiev the rent/prices are also unreasonably high although they've fallen somewhat since the beginning of the crisis.
And Moscow is famous for its exorbitant housing prices. I remember reading a couple of years ago that for the price of a 2-room apartment near the center of Moscow in a terrible state of disrepair you could buy a villa on the Mediterranean!
Anyway, taking your Russian friends along is a good idea. And if possible, finding out about the neighbors in advance especially as you have a baby. They may be fond of loud music or brawls, or like our neighbor upstairs (an ex-con) throw trash out of the window and knock away at something at any hour of the night. And the police may not be helpful as they're always short-handed and underpaid and have more serious cases.
As for vulgar wallpaper - just wondering, what exactly do you mean? When the sky's overcast for half a year, a bit of color could be good (by which I don't mean wallpaper with cabbage-sized roses against a golden background, plus a tiger-colored suite :)
What I personally hate is wallpaper with vertical stripes. When I walk past it I tend to get dizzy :0
Hi Julia
ReplyDeleteWallpaper with white circles and a yellow circle in the center that looked like yes, fried eggs! wallpaper with red roses on it and stripes etc etc. If I am in Kieve later perhaps we can have a coffee? I like wallpaper but it individual taste and should be put on the walls of a rented flat.
A coffee would be nice, or if I'm in Moscow (I was last there 20 years ago, at 13 so I'd find it's changed a lot!)
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