Finding Flats to Rent in Madrid

This is a bit of a shameless plug, but hey, it's my blog! And it might help other people moving to Madrid. When we first arrived back in August last year, job number one was to find somewhere to live. This proved to be pretty difficult as we had virtually no Spanish and most landlords had no English. We tried really hard, but advertised flats had either already been let or somebody would call us back later (I think this is Spanish for 'you call me back when you can speak Spanish properly' or 'I'm having my lunch, go away').

We knew there were rental agencies out there. We stumbled across a horrible one when we answered an advert. They spoke no English and told us that for a fee of about one month's rent, they would give us a list of available properties. It was then up to us to make arrangements to view them. We declined.

A few days later we stumbled across another agency, run by a very chatty and helpful British bloke called Mike. We went to meet him at his office (on a Sunday!), he listened to what we wanted, and gave us a list of three places to look at. He made appointments for us with the landlords and when we came back empty-handed but with an increased budget he was more than happy to dig out another three places to look at. As it happened we fell in lurve with the first of the second batch, and Mike did some negotiating with the landlord and arranged a meeting for us to go and sign the contract. He also came to that meeting, and went through the contract clause by clause so that we understood what was going on. For this he charged us two weeks' rent, and it really was worth it.

Subsequently I have built him a really fab website and he is now getting enquiries from people all over the world and is arranging accommodation for them before they land. I wish the website had existed before we landed. Flats to rent in Madrid.