When you move to Madrid the reasons why you do it might be very different, a new job, a new chapter in your life, getting closer to your loved ones that once moved to Spain some time ago… Any reason is a good reason to do it, but most of the cases forces you to find a flat in your new chosen city to live. Nowadays you have plenty of internet platforms that offer you places to rent, such us www.idealista.com, www.fotocasa.es, tucasa.com and even real estate companies have their own webs, where they offer the flats that they have come to an agreement with the owners to rent (this is not always completely true, but we will go back to it later). These are www.tecnocasa.es, www.gilmar.es, www.redpiso.es, and many other more, some of them specialized in certain areas, or certain segment of market, as luxury or more generalistic.
When you look for a flat or a house to rent in the internet, you can use any of these to get information about prices, different areas, features and general information that you could be interested, but there are differences to use ones or the others, not better or worse but it is good to know what to expect from each one of them. When you look in real estate web pages you know that there is always a company behind it, that means that you will always have to pay agency fee, but at least having a company to deal with, in theory comforting. In many cases they are a franchise and franchises don’t work the same in Spain that in the US, for instance. For what it matters to us regarding flat renting, such companies as tecnocasa and redpiso are run by small entrepreneurs and they take care of nearby rental market, they are usually nice and efficient but the movement of the market lately has increased their fee, which is not cheap (at least one month ́s rent), and if trouble show up, that sometimes they do, they are pretty difficult to get hold of them (especially if you have already made the payment). On the other hand you have the real estate platforms such us idealista and fotocasa which are just internet platforms, so real estate companies and individuals would put up their flats. In these ones you would find all the options of the companies plus the not professional ones (individuals that they have a flat to rent for different reasons, heirs, investment).
These ones, usually the ads begin with “no agencias” or “directo propiedad”, mean that you don ́t have to pay agency fee, you will deal directly with your future landlord. In this case, like everything in life, there are all sorts of landlords some nicer than others. Anyways, do not be surprised about the deposit, that the law marks it to 2 months rent and this money should not be kept by the landlord, it has to be sent (usually by the land lord but both possibilities are legal) to the “Comunidad de Madrid”.
Above this is not unusual to ask for other guarantees like proof of your last 2 wages, or a bank to be your guarantor for the quantity of 2 to 6 months rent (the reason for this is that the Spanish law is very in favor of tenants so landlords want to be covered if you decide not to paythe rent as contracted). We will have another article on the requirements and legal aspects of renting a flat in madrid, but to get started to know the market the choices in internet are the ones above mentioned. The third possibility is to walk around the streets in the area that you like and get phone numbers from ads hanging from balconies and windows of the apartments for rent, sometimes there are little gems hiden away from big brother internet worth a check. Good luck with it and get in touch with us if you need our help.
