Rent an Apartment in Tallinn: a Guide [1]

The day one decide to move, the one of finding a proper place where to live is one of the most difficult issues to solve, especially if the goal is to find an apartment without  being killed by that kind of miserable frustration that comes by the immense amount of small problems connected to the search.

In this, after all, Estonia does not make a great difference and respects a sadly known plot made of unpoliteness, tricks and hidden unfair expenses connected with the statuts of “expat”.

Know where to go – Internet

Walking around the city to pop in one out of the many small real estate offices is something that rarely helps, especially if we do not speak Estonian.

Probably because it has been well nourished by locals and lots of local artificial money during the booming years, the Estonian real estate sector seems not to be as developed as other ones when it gets about negotiating in foreign languages, English included.

Looking for a flat in Tallinn, as usual for the e-country, is more an internet thing than something to do in real life trying to pick words from magazines showing classified ads that can rarely be understood by newcomers.

Among the must-visit sites are City24 and KV, two real estate portals available also in English that the whole country seems to use to advertise its propertise and fill them in with other (paying) human beings.

Still, being the country quite small, do not expect to find a great difference in the offer of the two sites: City24 and KV tend in fact to be quite the same thing with just different layouts and different interfaces.

Young people looking for a room in a shared apartment in Tallinn or Tartu, then could find convenient to add to the list of sites to pay a visit to also Tudengikodu, a free to use website used mostly by students careful more about prices than luxury or aestethic.

Negotiate, negotiate, negotiate.

Countries like Egypt and Turkey are common touristic destination for Estonians and I bet the more people used to visit those countries, the more they learnt how to develop the culture of negotiations also up here in the top of the Baltic States.

Since its peek in 2007, the price of apartments in Tallinn suffered (or benefitted, it depends if you own or not any real estate)  for a significant drop making people discover words as “nominal prices” and “real prices” as City24 Statistical department showed in its last report and as we explained here on Estonian Free Press no longer than few weeks ago.

This means, then, that once on pages as the real estate portals mentioned above, it would be a dramatic mistake to consider the price published online as the real one that we will have to pay to get the keys of the apartment.

Negotiate, lower the price, step back if you need to: people still tend to ask a lot more than the real value of the places for rent – especially when the negotiation is held in a language that is not Estonian nor Russian.

Which is the margin of the negotiations? Well, I honestly do not think you would offend anyone starting with an offer 10%/20% than the starting price, believe me.

Get yourself a contract

No one likes taxes and do not believe to those ones saying that people in Estonia are so intelligent that they know the importance of taxation and they all pay taxes.

Being a foreigner looking for an apartment in Tallinn, at least in terms of taxes, you will always be seen as a great scapegoat to avoid the national fiscal system by those intelligent and smart people who understood that cash payments are complicated to track.

And if you think that, after all, you do not care about taxes and you can get a cheaper contract without making your agreement official with proper contract, let me tell you a story. A personal one.

Back few years ago I have been renting a flat in Kadriorg – proper district for a journalist, they say – from a local politician whose name and party are not important now.

Being the agreement between a politician and a journalist, two very smart kind of people, we both knew no contract was needed for our deal: I just had to pay my way too expensive (6.000EEK) rent in cash every month and she simply had to keep me there without calling the police saying that I squat in her place.

Do you want to hear about the end of the story?

One day the very polite and shy politician decides that 6000 Kroons is not a proper price for her soviet-style apartment and notifies me that, within a less than to weeks, the rent is going to increase by two-thousands-kroons. Adding, obviously, that the absence of the contract made all that possible.

I need a flat NOW!

In case of situations like that one, the best first solution is always internet – because a roof comes always before lawyers, letters and complaints.

Estonia has in fact two very active communities on CouchSurfing and Hospitality Club – fantastic sites both for finding interesting people to chat with, a bed for one or two night or enormous personal networks able to find a cheap room or apartment for rent in Tallinn within hours.

[Continues – Next Week]