So you are finally moving to Spain to either work, study or simply retire and are looking for an apartment?
We’re sorry to have to welcome you with bad news but this is probably the most difficult part of your relocation. The last few years the prices has gone through the roof in Spain and especially in big cities like Barcelona or Madrid.
That being said with the right amount of patience and research you can most definitely find your dream home here.
So where to look for an apartment? Well that will depend if you are looking for a short term or long term rental.
Short term rentals
Of course the number one site to start looking for short term rentals is airbnb.com but keep in mind that it’s mostly for touristic apartments so that will factor in their cost.
Another -and according to a lot of expats better- option is spotahome.com. These are fully furnished apartments (or even rooms) that can be rented for medium to long term and being a local company, spotahome.com will a lot of times have people checking the properties themselves and have walkthrough videos and explanations.
Long term rentals
Now for long term rentals there are hundreds of agency websites that you can go through but either way almost all of them will also post their listings in classifieds websites.
idealista.com is the largest one by far and they have been in the market for 20 years operating all over Spain as well as in Portugal and Italy. It’s hard to count the number of the apartments that you can find there but if it’s for rent, it’s on idealista.com
fotocasa.com is another great option and from our experience it’s a little bit easier to filter the results compared to idealista if you have specific requirement for the state of the property as it has a lot more options.
habitaclia.com has currently around 20,000 apartments for rent listed in Barcelona only and according to their website they have more than 5.5 million visits per month making them one of the largest in Spain as well. One cool option that they have is that instead of clicking 10 times to filter your results you can type phrases such as “apartment with parking in Barcelona” and start searching right away.
Our last suggestion would be pisos.com. As the name itself stands for “flats” that should indicate right away that they are right there on top with the rest of the large websites in Spain.
If you are looking for higher end places to rent in Barcelona you might want to go straight to the websites of some agencies such as aproperties.com or engelvoelkers.com who are specialized in such apartments.
If you need help to narrow down your options maybe you should take a quick look at the Top 5 Neighborhoods to live in Barcelona or if you already found an apartment that you like and want to know if you are eligible to rent it you might want to take a look at this article on the documents that you will need to present to the landlords to get approved.