Without a roof June 4, 2010

Besides the visa and the plane travel, another thing that is making me worried is finding a place to live.

Since before I sent my application, I heard that the housing situation in the swedish biggest cities is chaotic. I didn’t give it much attention, nor worried about it – didn’t want to delude myself, after all I didn’t even knew if I’d have money to go if I passed! But well, I should have worried before – and if you’re thinking about studying in Sweden, I’d advise you to do the same ASAP.

Getting a place to stay in the biggest cities – like Stockholm and Gothenburg – or in the student cities – like Lund – is very complicated. There are literally thousands of people fighting for a chance of VIEWING an apartment – yes, that’s right, there are applications even for the right of viewing an apartment before deciding if you want it or not.

The natural route for a foreigner looking for a home before arriving in the country is finding the housing sites or ad sites. In the end of this post I’ll list everything I’ve found.

To sum it up:

List of avaliable apartments at Boplats. The darked yellow ones were suggested for me. Look at the "Reg. Count" column. This is the amount of people that are trying to get the same apartment I want. Awesome isn't it?

This is just to illustrate how surreal is the housing problem. To actually have a chance, you need to be registered in the site for months; people who are in the queue for the longest periods have priority for renting.

Another option is to rent a room in someone else’s house, or finding students who are sharing their apartment. The bad side of this is that the rent is not much cheaper than some of those apartments, and well, you’re in someone else’s house. And of course, don’t think it will be easy to find those, there’s also a lot of competition for those! I’ve got many “no”s already, and some “try again later”s. Not to talk about the obvious scams!

But well, it’s only june.  I think more apartments will show up around july/august, when people are moving out. In the worst scenario, I’ll just stay in the hostel were I’ve been in my last vacation, and hope to find a place quickly. On August 25th Boplats is gonna offer some places to students, something interesting may show up. And of course, I’ll meet the other students and maybe we can end up sharing a bigger place.

I kinda regret not having applied to Uppsala now…the cost of living there is smaller, and it’s easier to find a place there. :/

As promised, there’s the list of sites:

Blocket: A site with ads where you can find pretty much everything – bicycles, cars, houses, boyfriends, jobs, books. There you can find ads for the entire country, to rent or sublet, and you can also publish an ad, saying that you need a place. Be careful with scams!

Studentlya: The legend say that they offer apartments and rooms, but until now I’ve only found rooms there. It’s not very organized, and there are tons of outdated ads. But well, maybe you can find something there! You can also post an ad, looking for roomies.

The next links are valid for Gothenburg only:

The universities recommend that you try your luck on student housing sites. Chalmers points you to two options: SGS and Chalmers Studentbostader.

SGS: Register and join their queue ASAP. They require some documents, and you probably won’t have your resident permit yet, but it’s no problem: Just e-mail them and explain your case, they’ll register you (your queue time will start counting), but you’ll only be able to apply for the apartments there after sending all the required documents. Some people register there while they’re still on high school, so you get the idea.

But don’t be discouraged! SGS also offers some apartments on the Sista Minuten system. What does that mean? They put some apartments on their site depending on their avaliability, and the first one to click on them wins the place. You have 2 minutes to fill the application form or it goes to the next candidate, so have your documents always around. Talk about adrenalin!

Chalmers Studentbostader: The Chalmers residences are near the campi. If you’re and Erasmus Mundus student, relax: Chalmers guarantee you a place. If you aren’t, the site has an area for the international students. With your letter of acceptance, you’ll receive a PDF from CSB with a password to access that area. There they offer some apartments from time to time, in a Sista Minuten fashion.  They are really hard to get and you gotta be fast, but I know some people that did it. Good luck!

Boplats: Welcome to hell, this is where I’ve been spending most of my time. Pretty much all the avaliable apartments in the city are offered here, so choose one and wait…forever. Register ASAP! It seems you won’t be able to get one with less than 6 months on the queue, and I’m being pretty optimistic here. They also offer rooms from the Chalmers buildings here, but you also have to be in the queue.

When registering, the site will ask which are your preferred areas. If you’re a student, you’ll probably want to choose Centrum and Väster. You can also be even more specific, but don’t be too exact, or you won’t get many recommendations; if you try to get an apartment that wasn’t reccomendated for you, your choices are near zero. Filling your registration properly is very important; Boplats says that your registration time and the compatibility between your needs and the offered apartments will raise your choices.

Boplats also has a subletting area, with many rooms in other persons’ houses. Again, be careful: there are many scam ads. Never pay anything in advance and report suspicious ads so they can review them.

I hope this helps. If someone wants to share more advices or wants to correct some information, feel free to comment! Lycka till!