Live Like a Parisian (Londoner,
Berliner) on Your Next Trip—with Help from the Web
(unpublished)
Three weeks before our long-planned trip to Paris, our arrangement
to stay with a friend there fell through. What to do? We’d been looking forward
to living like Parisians for a week, in an apartment rather than a hotel—but
how could we find a similar situation, at an affordable price, from across the
sea?
Fortunately, there was Paris Craigslist. Yes, Craigslist—the popular free online
bulletin board that helps Americans find housing, jobs, and romance—has now
gone international, with sites serving English speakers in cities from Sao
Paulo to Sydney. And just like their American counterparts, Web-savvy
foreigners are using Craigslist to sublet their apartments and homes to
travelers for short-term periods.
Two days of trans-Atlantic e-mails to intriguing prospects yielded
an array of possibilities, including the sublet we ultimately chose. Despite
its discouragingly brief posting, complete with misspelling:
Ad:
EUR450 / 1br - Rent a flat
-----------------------------------------------------------
Date: 2004-12-07, 5:03PM CET
23m2, carming and peaceful, 450 euros per week
it turned out to be a
lovingly kept studio in a fabulously central location, a block from Notre Dame
and the Seine.
Our week in Paris saw my friend Barbara and me, scarves
painstakingly arranged, shopping for our dinner with “fellow” Parisians at the
local open-air market, and checking out neighborhood restaurants recommended by
Franck, the apartment’s young owner. A docent at the Louvre who stayed with his
parents during our sublet, he even ushered us into the museum with him on
Sunday morning, enabling us to avoid all the lines!
At Franck’s invitation, we sampled his array of teas from
Mariage Freres, a legendary 150-year-old purveyor based in Paris. In our spare
moments, we browsed his collection of classic French literature and marveled at
his artful decoration of the studio, from the silver teapot collection to the walls
adorned with 19th-century portrait photos to the charming displays of ephemera like
a crumbling copy of the Complete Works of
Victor Hugo.
All this was ours for about 56 euros ($80) a night in a peak
season, thanks to the Web.
Is subletting for
you?
If you’re attached to hotel-style amenities—room service, maid
service, a bellhop to carry your bags, a concierge to answer all your questions—the
more do-it-yourself nature of subletting may not be to your liking. On the
other hand, if you’re an independent sort who tends to arrive at a new destination
with an already well-thumbed guidebook and a genuine curiosity about how the
residents really live, subletting may open up a whole new level of travel to
you.
Subletting requires a certain degree of trust in your fellow
humans, though, because it involves a measure of uncertainty and risk. Does the
home really exist? Will the plumbing and other amenities be up to your
standards? Will the neighborhood turn out to be scary, noisy, or otherwise
unsuitable? Asking for photos, and possibly references from a few previous
subletters, may alleviate such concerns, but if they’re foremost in your mind, subletting
may not be for you.
Personally, in more than two years of subletting both in the
United States and abroad, we’ve seldom been disappointed, and never seriously
so. Often we’ve found the sublet to be far more enchanting than promised.
Locals often undersell their homes, perhaps because they take for granted the
many attractions that will delight someone new to the destination.
Where to find sublets
Every Craigslist site (the Bay Area’s site, www.craigslist.org, is the mother of
them all, with two million visitors each month) lists all the other cities with
sites, both at home and abroad. If you see your destination city, click it and look
for the housing section, then explore both “sublets & temporary” and
“vacation rentals.” The Paris and London sites are particularly bountiful; London
attracts more than 150,000 unique visitors each month, and Paris draws 50,000. Newer
sites, or those for smaller cities, may not be as well used (yet).
If there’s no site for your destination, don’t despair; Craigslist
is constantly adding new cities. Also, although it may be hard to beat Craigslist’s
traffic figures, don’t rule out other Web sites, such as those devoted to your
destination—like Franglo.com, a site
for English-speaking lovers of France. Or check out a home exchange site, such
as www.homeexchange.com; many of
those offering home exchanges are also willing to consider sublets,especially if the home in question is
a second home or an investment property. Remember, as with romance, you only need
to find one sublet—as long as it’s one that excites you.
In addition, consider posting your own ad to directly
solicit prospects. Here’s an ad we posted on Paris Craigslist, for example, in
both the “sublets” and “vacation rentals” sections:
Two women seek sublet, Dec. 30-Jan. 6
Two
women seek sublet Dec. 30-Jan. 6 to spend New Year's Eve in beautiful
Paris. My friend Barbara is a city planner, and I am a book editor.
400-450 euros. Studio OK.
Within
a day, we’d heard from an artist in Hawaii who owned an studio in the 14th
arrondissement, and an American student who seeking to sublet her one-bedroom
apartment in the 2nd arrondissement while she went home to New York for the
holidays.
What do you want in a
sublet?
Charming fully
furnished apartment in the center of Paris, with a bedroom and a living-room,
bathroom and a little kitchen; 15 minutes walking from the Eiffel Tower. Ideal
for two persons. Photos available.
Lovely
one bedroom in the 19th arrondissement in Paris, next to the canal de l'Ourq et
le park de la Villette. Fully furnished, w/a cleaning person who comes once a
week. If interested, please give me a call at [New York phone number] or just
e-mail me. Thanks.
Ideally, you’ll have many potential sublets to choose from,
so it helps to think about what’s important to you. Here are some questions to
ask yourself; make a list of the answer
- How big does the apartment or home need to be? (You may want
to downsize your thinking; most foreigners live in smaller spaces than
Americans do.)
- Must there be separate beds and/or bedrooms? If so, how
many?
- Location, location, location. Would you like a central
location, near many of the sights you want to see? You can often save money by
staying in a less central neighborhood, or even in a suburb outside the city,
but your time and convenience—and what you see when you walk out the door each
morning—are important too. You may also want to be near public transportation,
or to inquire about parking if you’re thinking of renting a car. And you’ll
probably want to be within an easy walk or drive of food sources, whether that means
an open-air market, a grocery store, or a respectable array of restaurants.
- Would you like a lively neighborhood with lots of nightlife,
or a more quiet, residential one? If the former, what noise level are you
willing to tolerate in return?
- Do you prefer a modern home or building, or a more historic
one?
- Would you like photos or references from previous subletters?
Some owners post photos with their notices, some provide them upon request, and
some leave it up to your imagination.
- What sort of amenities are essential to you? Keep in mind
that amenities which are standard in the United States may be rare in your
destination city. We once sublet a Paris apartment that turned out to have no
telephone—we hadn’t thought to ask! (Europeans rely even more heavily on cell
phones than Americans do.) Fortunately, we had brought our cell phone with us.
Here’s a short list of basic amenities. To maximize your
prospects, put as few as possible on your list of “must-haves.”
- Telephone.
(This is almost always for local calls only; to call long distance, use
a cell phone or buy a phone card from a local vendor.)
- Stove,
conventional oven, microwave. (Some apartments may have only one or two
of these; others offer a full kitchen.)
- Shower
or bathtub? (You may have to choose between them.)
- Elevator.
If stairs are OK, how many flights? (Remember, you’ll be carrying your
luggage, and then your daily groceries and other purchases, up to your
new home. Also note that in Europe, the ground floor doesn’t count—so a
“second-floor” apartment is actually on the third floor.)
- Clothes
washer
- Clothes
dryer (generally rarer than washers)
- Dishwasher,
CD player, TV/cable, Internet access, and so on
Finally, what’s your price range, in both dollars and the
local currency? (To avoid last-minute surprises, be sure you know the current
exchange rate—don’t assume it’s the same as the last time you visited!) Browse the
housing posts to get a sense of the going rate for a sublet with the
characteristics on your list.
You may want to include your “must-have list” when first
contacting an owner, to avoid wasting both your time if the sublet doesn’t fit
your bill. On the other hand, once you’ve been seduced by the owner’s
description, you may be willing to compromise. But the bottom line is, if
something is essential to your having an enjoyable trip, be sure to ask about
it.
Closing the deal
Once you’ve reached an agreement to sublet from an owner,
it’s a good idea to send a confirming e-mail listing all the details you’ve
agreed on: price, security deposit if any, dates of your stay, and any other
special arrangements or stipulations. If you feel the need to formalize it
further, you can do this in the form of a short contract that you fax back and
forth for signatures.
How to pay? Owners often specify their preferred method of
payment. If they live in the United States, they may simply want you to send
them a check in advance; upon receipt, they’ll send the keys to you. For your
peace of mind, try to carry out this transaction at least two weeks before your
trip, so that the keys arrive in plenty of time. Have the owner FedEx the keys (so
they’re traceable, in the unlikely event that they go astray) and let you know
the tracking number.
Owners living abroad may want payment in advance, or they
may be content to simply meet you at the home when you arrive to exchange money
and keys. For advance payments to owners abroad, we like PayPal (www.paypal.com) for its ease and
affordability. PayPal instantly transfers money between any two people with an
e-mail address, taking care of currency conversion in the process. There’s a
small fee to the owner, no fee to you. PayPal has foreign sites as well, which
can explain the service to the owner in their own language if they aren’t
familiar with it (www.paypal.fr for
France, for instance).
If you’re paying the owner directly once you arrive, note
that checks drawn on a U.S. bank account are not usually cashable in a foreign
country. To avoid carrying large amounts of foreign currency on a long journey,
we purchase traveler’s checks before we leave the States and then redeem them
at an American Express office in the destination city, just before we meet with
the owner.
Finally, not all owners require a security deposit, but if
they do, be sure that your e-mail agreement or contract specifies when and how it
will be refunded. Ideally, foreign owners will return the deposit when you turn
back the home, before you leave the country. Owners in the United States may
want to have someone check the apartment before they mail your deposit check
back to you.
Bon voyage!
