Searching for a place to live: Airbnb

Report by Denise A.

Airbnb.com

If you’re planning on studying in another country for a certain amount of time, you also have to think about a place to live. One opportunity if you are searching online is the web page www.airbnb.com.
This page helped me to find someone to live with. The page provides different possibilities. You can find someone who rents a whole apartment, just one room or even a house. The prices differ from place to place and you have many choices around the world. When you are looking for an apartment or a room, you can type in the city you want to live in.

Finding a Place on Airbnb

Furthermore, you have the opportunity to look at a map and click on an available apartment when you like the area where the apartment is located. There is also always a picture of the person, who is renting the apartment or available room attached, so that you can see if the person looks friendly. Moreover, you always find a description of the apartment and the room and the price per day (or month if they just rent for at least 4 weeks). If you’re interested in the offer you can send a request. That doesn’t mean that you already confirmed. It just shows the provider that you’re interested.

How do I get in touch with landlords?

After that you can e-mail back and forth to find out if you can imagine living with that person. I would also recommend talking on the phone. Even though I had my own room and bathroom, I found it important to know who I am going to live with for four months. Since you will still use the living room and kitchen together, I think it is important to get to know each other before. I also got some pictures from the room of my landlord. With this, I was looking forward to move in and could imagine living there. Airbnb is also a great opportunity if you are looking for a place to live during vacation. There are many landlords who are also renting a room for just some nights. It is fun to get to know new people and it’s much cheaper than to sleep in a hotel.

I also tried www.craigslist.com, a web page where Americans offer pretty much everything: household appliances, cars, places to live and much more. I was sending several e-mails to different people and just some answered. Maybe I had just no luck, because I know of other people who found their place to live there.
All in all I can recommend Airbnb, because you have a wide variety and the web page is really easy to understand and structured.