Note: My experience is based on looking for an apartment in Helsinki area (to be more precise, Matinkylä in Espoo), but I hope that many pieces of advice will be also applicable for other areas in Finland. Feel free to correct me or contribute.
This
Thursday I gave away my key to HOAS apartment - meaning that my residence in
student housing came to an end! For me it felt as a symbolic move to an adult
life, regardless of the fact, that I already have one masters and have been
working full-time for last 3 years (almost). And, of course, it meant, that I
had to find an apartment at the private market.
Search
First, I
made the list of websites where to look for and submitted my applications:
Nuorisosäätiö (you can apply if you are
under 29)
Sato (good thing - you get
a text message when you are offered a potential apartment to consider)
Newsec (good thing - application
for a specific apartment is processed within one day, after which you receive
an e-mail confirming what is your place in queue for this apartment)
tori.fi (primarily short-term rentals of furnished apartments)
Espoo-specific:
Second, I
set the alerts, meaning notifications about rental apartments (Talenna
vahdiksi/Talenna vahti) at following aggregators:
I made sure
that I had my e-mail notifications on to be able to check automatic
notifications about new apartments for rent as soon as possible (they appear at
the aggregators usually the same day as posted on the original website where
the aggregator picks them up from, maybe with 4-5 hours delay). Most important
thing in apartment search is to be fast!
Application
Applications
for renting an apartment come with different level of detail, but be ready to
answer to following questions:
-your
current employment and salary/current place of study
-reason for
looking for a new apartment
-urgency of
application (need for housing)
-henkilötunnus
(your security number)
Applications
ask approximately same information, so it is useful to have all details at hand
in OneNote or a Word document and just copy-paste it to speed up application
process. Pay attention to providing correct details, as you are likely to be
contacted by e-mail or phone in next 1-3 weeks. Also note down the expiration
date of application (it may expire in 1 or 3 months, for example).
Applications
may also have a field for free-form application. There I focused on my ability
to pay the rent (permanent employment), small things that may (subjectively)
make me a better tenant for some landlords (not smoking, no pets) and the clear
reson for changing apartment (for me it was the upcoming termination of right
to reside in HOAS).
What to
follow in next posts:
-Inspecting an apartment before making decision to rent it
-Concluding
a rental agreement
-Analysing
fraud risks
Questions or ideas about next blog posts? Drop me a message at #startyourFinnish Facebook page.