Trying to find a home to rent - are we doing it right?

Feb 6, 2010 · Jay Brook · 4 replies · 2979 views

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Hello All! :)

Myself and family are moving to Madrid as I have a new job here. I started work about 3 weeks ago and wife and kids to move out with me at the start of April.

My task - find a house near the kids new school (Kings College, Soto de Vinuelas, Tres Cantos, Madrid).

I have engaged a local relocation firm and seen a couple of properties a little bit out of the area, but are hoping to have some better viewings over the next week or two.

The relo people I'm sure will do a good job, but I can't help thinking that I could be doing more myself.

In the meantime, relocation people aside, I just wanted to know whether there exists 'another way' to find a rental home in Spain?

I intend on making some calls to local estate agents next week myself, plus I'll keep scanning over idealista.com and fotocasa.es too.

I've just posted a wanted ad here:

http://www.spainexpat.com/spain/forum/viewthread/6699/ (http://www.spainexpat.com/spain/forum/viewthread/6699/)

...but should I be doing anything else?

Thanks in advance for any hints that you might be able to provide!

Cheers,

Jay

Feb 6, 2010 · Expatriator

Uh, you read over apartments in spain (http://www.spainexpat.com/spain/information/apartments_in_spain/) right?

Feb 7, 2010 · Jay Brook

> Uh, you read over apartments in spain (http://www.spainexpat.com/spain/information/apartments_in_spain/) right?

Hi, yes, thanks saw that plus the real estate in Spain (http://www.spainexpat.com/spain/information/real_estate_in_spain/) info too - both very useful indeed.

What I'm looking for specifically is whether I've 'missed' anything in my search - I see there's quite a few properties about with 'for rent' signs on them along with a number. I'm assuming that these properties are in the two core property search engines in Spain, but maybe the done thing over here is to drive about collecting numbers from these signs and making calls?

Or, maybe I should go to the areas of interest and buy a local news paper for rental listings instead of using the internet.

That's the kinda thing I'm looking for - just confirmation that I'm doing the right thing, and/or whether other (better?) methods exist to source rental properties.

Cheers,

Jay

Feb 8, 2010 · Expatriator

Yeah, if your Spanish is good enough you should be walking/driving around collecting numbers. It's also a good idea to just call the number when you're standing in front of the place. Sometimes you can get in to see it right away. Sometimes those places are rented through agencies however, in which case they'll often be in the leading rental sites or magazines too. You've seen loquo.com too right?