Arrival - The impossible quest to find an apartment

Coming from Amiens, a city in the north of France where student accommodation is as easy to find as a baguette in a bakery, I quickly realized that I had to forget my illusions in this area when I landed in Sweden in Gothenburg.
I had already had the opportunity to exchange with former French students who had lived in Sweden and had warned me that the task was going to be difficult, but I did not expect such a wall of difficulties. I tell you right now: if you are planning to study in Sweden, forget your hopes of finding a private apartment on your own or you may end up renting an Airbnb apartment until the end of your semester.

But I didn't know at that time yet how difficult this exercise was, and no matter how candid I was, I nevertheless embarked on this frantic search for housing. Like many naive students, I have had the bitter experience of doing research on blocket.se, a kind of Swedish "Gumtree" or on the different facebook groups dedicated to it. In addition to the fact that most of the publications are in Swedish and that you will have to spend several hours deciphering each ad from Google's bad translations, you must know several golden rules to find an apartment on this site.

1) Be ultra-reactive: there are so few ads for as many people as it is always the law of first come, first served.

2) I advise you to create alerts directly from blocket. se or on facebook

3) Prepare yourself to take on an avalanche of winds: out of several hundred messages sent, I had to receive 6 or 7 answers at most, it hurts I know but if you are prepared upstream you will be better able to take it

4) Many conditions are sometimes imposed by the owners (who are in fact often second hand tenants): gender condition (in this case, the female will be more likely to find apartments), age sometimes, non-smoking, without animals and you can sometimes be asked to be vegetarian.

I finally decided to go to Sweden for a few days during the summer holidays to try to find by myself on the spot, either through real estate agencies or by crossing my fingers to meet people on the spot.

First disappointment: agencies are almost non-existent, the only one I could find was specialized in sales.
Second disappointment: everyone on the spot is in the same situation as you and is looking for an apartment desperately.

So I came back to France empty-handed after a single visit to an apartment at rent that I already knew was way too high for me.

Finally, I was very lucky: on the day of my final departure for Sweden, the SGS Accommodation Group, which manages the student residences in Gothenburg, offered me and a friend the perfect shared flat with all the services that you can imagine: free laundry, free gym, free sauna, football fields, barbecues, gymnasium (footsal, handball, basketball, free basketball) but This is where my Swedish adventure really began.

So I give you this advice right away: when you enroll in university, you will be offered a university accommodation in residence, don't do as I did while trying to find by yourself first: jump on the opportunity and go for it. You won't find anything better, not at this price (we each pay 309€ per month approximately) and especially not under the same conditions.

Good luck in your quest!

Credits:

photo:http://blog.cavautlecoup.fr/files/2014/01/Fotolia_49309089_M.jpg

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