The art of apartment hunting

We’ve been around on every website known (to google) for finding furnished apartments to rent in Amman. We’ve changed budget about one hundred times and considered everything from sharing flats to living in a studio apartment or renting an apartment 3 bedroom big. 

We started off seeing some studio apartments, we were excited to go there because the rent was exceptionally low, even most of the bills included. We should've known better than to expect anything close to reasonable standard. I don’t need to say much more than that the hallway had a, lets say convincing, odour of cat piss.

Onto the next project, we’ve had contact with two agents working for a website (gweet.com, similar to airbnb.com) and they took us to see some apartments, slightly out of our budget. For the first apartment we ventured far into a residential area I don’t know the name of, and visited the darkest, most depressing apartment I’ve ever seen. Considering standard and location it was way over priced, I didn’t even have to glance at Robert to know we wouldn’t move there if it so were for free. I guess it was some sort of sales trick that he took us there first. Because the next apartment, for the same price, was Aamazing (yes, it deserves both a capital and a dubbel ‘A’). Central, newly renovated, big, fresh, modern, never used before, safe area, close to transportation, you name it. Only draw back was that it is i.n the basement, though it has windows. And of course not to forget - it is definitely too good to be true, and a little over our budget. 

So tomorrow we will see two apartments, both with perfect locations. One of them seems to cheap, so there must be a draw back there somewhere (my guess is, shared bathroom with the whole building), and the other one takes out an agents fee of 10% so it must be really good for us to go for it. 

It is fun, but nerve wracking. How many apartments should we see? How much of a “game” do the landlords/agents play? Is it okay to try and bargain the price? How long can you wait until you accept an offer? Clearly, I’m not very good at this, I just want everyone to be open about their intentions and let me take my time making up my mind. Oh, in a perfect world. 

So far we’ve been, what I consider, lucky. We’ve met nice and helpful people. And I think that the fine art of apartment hunting can be mastered by being nice (thanks dad for letting me inherit your ‘trevlighet’) and relentless. Answer to ads of apartments you don’t even want or afford, chance is they have another apartment. And if you’re nice enough, they’ll even come pick you up and drive you back to wherever and you won’t have to pay taxis back and forth everywhere!