Drew and I have spent the last 5 days visiting 10 apartments. I had been keeping an eye on apartments I found on a website called www.portalinmobiliario.com, which was basically a bad version of Zillow. It allowed me to see photos and basic details of the apartments, and it had contact info of the listing real estate agent. The website does have issues: the location pin doesn't change color after you've viewed it, so you're constantly retracing your steps, there were alot of apartments that had already been rented but the listing hadn't been removed, and there were also many duplicate listings. I hadn't bothered contacting anyone until the Monday before we moved, because it seemed like jumping the gun a bit, and I didn't want to waste my time if the apartment was already going to be gone by the time we got there. But, it did allow us to set a realistic budget, and we knew we'd at least be able to afford a large enough place in the neighborhood we wanted, which is Vitacura. We picked this neighborhood because it's very family friendly, there are parks littered all over the place. It's quiet, and it's very walkeable. So once we were able to secure spots at a decent private school in the same neighborhood, we knew we could start looking here. It actually reminds me of Platt Park in alot of ways. Here is a map of where Vitacura is (the red circle) in relationship to the whole of Santiago.
Our goal was to find a 3 bedroom apartment that was highly walkeable to the boys' school, the grocery store, parks, bus stops, etc., as we're trying to go carless while in the city, for under $2,000 per month. I found this budget to be pretty amazing considering we were looking in one of the nicest, most sought after neighborhoods in all of Santiago, which is, by many standards, the nicest, most stable city in all of South America. Now, were there lots of other bigger, newer, and more stylish apartments that were out of our price range? Yes, definitely. But were we only seeing dumps that felt living in a dingy tin can? No, we were not. We knew this budget was doable given my advanced research, so the Monday before we flew, I started contacting the listing agents using Whatsapp to try and schedule showings of the apartments that were listed at that time. I was able to do that surprisingly successfully; I think on the Wednesday that we flew, I already had 5 appointments lined up, and by the time our weekend of apartment hunting began on Friday afternoon, we had 8 booked with 2 more to follow by the end of the weekend.
Items that we learned during our hunt. Tenants in Santiago (and maybe all of South America, I'm not sure) typically buy their own appliances, which means when they move out, they take them with them. The only appliances that would stay are ones mounted to countertops, like the stove top. But dishwashers, refrigerators, and washing machines all go, so Drew and I will have the fun job of finding and installing our own once we find a place. I'm realizing this is actually a giant scheme by the landlords of Santiago. Could you imagine how much easier your landlord life would be if you didn't get called every time the dishwasher broke? It's brilliant.
Next item is that most apartments in the middle class neighborhoods are designed to have a live-in cook/housekeeper. This means that the kitchens are galley kitchens with doors that close, and off the back of the kitchen is typically the laundry room, the service bedroom, and service bathroom. This setup would allow the housekeeper to cook all the meals and do all the laundry behind closed doors. There is often times a door in between the living rooms and the bedrooms as well. I think half of this is for privacy and the other half is for energy conservation reasons. Having a service bed and bath is a phenomenon we were used to from Hong Kong. The difference was in Hong Kong it was still VERY common for most families with kids to have a "helper." But in all ten apartments that we toured just now in Santiago, none of the families had a helper (that I could tell), and none were using the service bedroom and bathroom as they were designed. Most were using them as offices, storage rooms, 4th bedrooms, etc., which is what we plan to do. Maybe this service bed and bath design will start dissipating as more and more families prefer more open concept layouts, but, for now, they are still around. And our apartment will most certainly have this galley style because we're not looking at super modern ones, due to our budget. Another difference from Hong Kong is that the service beds and baths in Santiago were almost a liveable size for an actual human, whereas the one in our Hong Kong apartment would not have qualified as more than a large hall closet. This is an example of a service bed and bath we saw on one of our tours.
Finally, most of the laundry rooms here are actually covered patios called loggias. They get alot of direct sunlight, which means most people here do not own dryers. They simply air dry their clothes. Luckily, the climate in Santiago is similar to Denver in that it has very low humidity, so air drying clothes is actually possible without gross, moldy results. Our Airbnb is the same, so I tried the whole phenomenon the other day, and, you know what, it worked! It was actually faster drying our clothes in the sun (under an hour) than it would take to dry a load in a normal dryer cycle. Now, was it a bit annoying to hang up every single kiddo sock? Yes, yes it was. Were the clothes as soft and fluffy as they normally are after coming out of the dryer? No, no they were not. But was it unbearable? No, no it wasn't. This is an example of a loggia we saw on one of our tours. A bit messy, but you get the idea.
Drew and I have officially begun contact negotiations on an apartment, so we'll see if we're successful. As you can imagine, renting as a foreigner has some complications, which I'll go into more next time. But fingers crossed we get our first choice!
