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    How Much Will It Cost You To Live Overseas?

    The only honest answer is, we have no idea. And neither does anyone else. The only one who can answer that question is you. Here’s the most important thing to understand about budgeting your new life overseas…

    Super Cheap

    • Chitré, Panama
    • Santa Marta, Colombia
    • Phuket, Thailand
    • Dumaguete, The Philippines

    Cheap

    • Medellin, Colombia
    • Boquete, Panama
    • Kyrenia, Cyprus
    • Hua Hin, Thailand
    • The Algarve, Portugal

    Affordable

    • Valencia, Spain
    • Cascais, Portugal
    • Las Terrenas, The DR
    • Pisa, Italy
    • La Rochelle, France
    • Mazatlán, Mexico

    Luxury

    • Ambergris Caye, Belize
    • Kotor, Montenegro
    • The Panama City Beaches
    • Paris, France
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  • Home
  • Countries

    Top Destinations:

    Whether you’re looking for fun and sun, a peaceful retirement, or the chance to earn some extra income, you’ve got a real world of opportunity open to you… In short, we’ve done our best to narrow down your best options, but only you can decide the right country for you.

    • Spain
    • Portugal
    • Panama
    • Belize
    • Colombia
    • Cyprus
    • Mexico
    • France
    • Montenegro
    • Browse All Countries

    Best For:

    • The Best Places To Retire
    • Health Care Abroad
    • Cost Of Living
    • Investing in Real Estate
    • Establishing Residency
    • Gun Laws In The World
    • English-Speaking Countries
    • Safest Places For Retirement
    • Best Places In Latin America
  • Budgets

    How Much Will It Cost You To Live Overseas?

    The only honest answer is, we have no idea. And neither does anyone else. The only one who can answer that question is you. Here’s the most important thing to understand about budgeting your new life overseas…

    Super Cheap

    • Chitré, Panama
    • Santa Marta, Colombia
    • Phuket, Thailand
    • Dumaguete, The Philippines

    Cheap

    • Medellin, Colombia
    • Boquete, Panama
    • Kyrenia, Cyprus
    • Hua Hin, Thailand
    • The Algarve, Portugal

    Affordable

    • Valencia, Spain
    • Cascais, Portugal
    • Las Terrenas, The DR
    • Pisa, Italy
    • La Rochelle, France
    • Mazatlán, Mexico

    Luxury

    • Ambergris Caye, Belize
    • Kotor, Montenegro
    • The Panama City Beaches
    • Paris, France
  • Resources

    Global Living

    • Living & Retiring Overseas
    • Raising A Family Abroad
    • Foreign Residency & Citizenship
    • Offshore & Diversification

    Making Money

    • International Real Estate
    • Banking
    • Employment
    • Investing

    Follow Us:

    • Meet Our Experts
  • Real Estate

    Buying Real Estate For Cashflow

    • Discover tips and strategies used by global property investing veterans

    Explore Our Latest Posts

    • Learn how to invest and purchase property abroad…

    Go To The Overseas Property Alert Site

    • How To Become Independently Wealthy And Fund The Lifestyle Of Your Dreams
  • Conferences

    Upcoming Events

    • Explore Our Events Site

    Live and Invest In Spain Conference

    Offshore Wealth Summit

    Greece Workshop

    VALENCIA, SPAIN

    Sep. 17-19, 2025

    PANAMA CITY, PANAMA

    Oct. 15-17, 2025

    VIRTUAL

    Nov. 13, 2025

    LEARN MORE
    DISCOUNT
    LEARN MORE
    PRE-REGISTER
    LEARN MORE
    PRE-REGISTER
    • MORE EVENTS

    Contact Our Events Team

    Toll-Free U.S. and Canada:
    1 (888) 627 8834
    From Outside North America:
    1 (443) 599 1221
    Working Hours
    Monday – Friday 08:00 am – 17:00 pm EST.

    Reach us with your questions by email at: events@liveandinvestoverseas.com

  • Store

    Unlock The World

    • Access Your Library

    Overseas Havens Reports

    • Expats' comprehensive destination guides

    Conference Kits

    • Hours of coverage  from our latests conferences

    Lahardan Books

    • Titles on living and investing around the world
    • Explore Our Store
    Your passport to a life well-lived abroad

    Services

    overseas living letter offers affordable retirement guidance
    The Simon Letter Wealth Protection Insights
    Global Property Advisor Global Investment Opportunities

    Our Customer Service team is here to assist with any questions or concerns CustomerService@LiveandInvestOverseas.com

  • My Library
Live and Invest Overseas
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Home Renting

Renting An Apartment Overseas

How To Get The Best Deal On A Rental Overseas

by Kathleen Peddicord
Jul 16, 2023
in Renting
0 0
Real estate agent showing property to senior couple

iStock/courtneyk

Last week I enjoyed three days online live with more than 100 Live And Invest Overseas readers interested in exploring their best options for spending time and money in Europe.

I was joined by two-dozen of our top resources across the Continent. Together, we led participants in our Live And Invest In Europe Virtual Conference on a grand tour of the Old World.

We traveled across France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Montenegro, Cyprus, and beyond…

And we benefitted from the collective wisdom of our assembled experts and expats shared during a series of panel discussions on key topics to consider when planning a move anywhere: residency and citizenship, health care and health insurance, taxes, and real estate.

Key starting-point question for the property conversation was one we get all the time.

Once you’ve chosen where you want to reinvent your life overseas, should you rent or buy a home there?

I recommend renting, at least at first, to give yourself a chance to try your chosen destination on for size.

Renting keeps you flexible. The costs of buying and selling a piece of property in Europe can be steep. You want to be sure you’ll be happy sticking around indefinitely before committing.

The most important thing to understand about finding rental accommodation (short- or long-term) in a foreign country is that you shouldn’t do it long distance. Not if you want to get a good deal and avoid surprises.

For, to get a good deal, you must shop beyond the internet market, and, to do that, you must have feet on the ground, either yours or those of a reliable local contact you trust.

Google The Right Way

Woman hands holding and touching on Apple iPad2 with Google search web page on a screen.
iStock/pressureUA

You can begin your search long distance, googling “For Rent” opportunities in the place where you’d like to spend time. You’ll find rental houses and apartments listed either by other gringos (that is, fellow non-locals) or by locals with the wherewithal to advertise their rentals online.

In other words, this route leads to the high-ticket and priced-for-the-gringo-market properties.

Google “Se Alquila” (in a Spanish-speaking market), “A Louer” (where folks speak French), or “Para Alugar” (where the language is Portuguese), and you improve your chances of penetrating the market to a more local level.

However, the real deals never make it anywhere a search engine could find them.

The best rentals can be found scanning grocery store bulletin boards, asking your lunch waitress and taxi driver for tips, scouring the local-language newspaper classifieds, or courtesy of your friend’s son’s teacher’s cousin who happens to be moving out of his apartment and would be willing to transfer the lease to you.

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Finding these kinds of leads is tough. Following through to vet them is even tougher, especially if you don’t speak the local language.

This is why you’ll hear such disparate accounts of what it costs to rent a home in Any Foreign Market. The cost of a rental sourced on an English-language agent’s website can be two or three times greater than the cost of a rental sourced via a local friend’s cousin.

You don’t have to care about that markup, and maybe you don’t. No one wants to be taken advantage of, but understand, too, that there’s nothing wrong with opting to spend a little more to make the experience a little less hassled. How much less hassled depends on how much more you’re comfortable paying and how much time and good humor you’re willing to put at risk wading through the hassle.An expat we spoke with recently in Valencia explained that he’s paying 1,600 euros per month for his apartment. He wanted a big space for his family and outdoor space for his children.

“I know I could have found something for less,” he said, “but we didn’t want to wait longer for our move.”

What else should you keep in mind when trying to find a place to rent to be your new home in another country?

Buying Overseas Won’t Be The Same As Buying In The U.S.

Probably you understand that purchasing real estate overseas, especially in an emerging or unregulated market, is nothing like purchasing real estate back home in, say, the United States. It may not have occurred to you, though, that the same goes for renting overseas. Just as when buying a piece of property in a foreign market you can’t take anything for granted, neither can you when renting one.
In some parts of the world, “unfurnished” means no stove in the kitchen and no lighting fixtures anywhere.

It can even mean no flooring or kitchen cabinets. Friends in Paris moved recently from one rental to a new one. They’d had to install flooring in the bathroom of the apartment where they had been living. They pulled it up and took it with them to their new place. That’s common.

Some markets, you, as the renter, are responsible even for structural repairs (cracks in the façade, for example, or a leaky roof).

And it’s always possible that the guy offering to rent you a house doesn’t, in fact, own that house. Maybe he’s subletting to you (which is illegal in some countries) or maybe it’s his friend’s house and he just happens to have a key.

Don’t sign a rental agreement until your attorney reviews it first (especially if it’s written in a language you don’t read). And don’t be surprised, if you’re renting on a very local level, if you’re not asked to sign anything at all. If the cousin of a friend introduces you to his neighbor whose house you decide to rent, the deal may be struck with a handshake.

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Here Are Other Key How To Rent Overseas pointers:

1.  Understand what’s included in your monthly rent

Make sure the lease establishes clearly what’s included in your rent and what’s not—building or homeowner’s association fees, water expense, utilities, phone, internet, etc.

2. Understand how, where, and to whom you pay which bills each month

Maybe you deposit the rent directly into the owner’s bank account. Maybe you pay a rental manager. Maybe you have to hand-deliver the check to your landlord. In Europe, rent is often paid by direct debit from your local bank account, which means you need a local bank account. And, often, building and HOA fees are paid to a different person or organization and by a separate check than the rent.

3. Ask what documentation you’ll have to produce to be able to rent

In France, you need to satisfy the landlord that you can afford to become his tenant, and, because it’s France, you do this by creating a thick dossier of financial documents, bank statements, pay stubs, reference letters, bank letters, guarantor letters, etc. It’s a serious effort that you can’t undertake lightly.

4. Understand when the rental period begins

The start date of your rental (that is, the date from which you’re paying rent) doesn’t always coincide with the date when you take up occupancy. Here in Panama City, for example, we paid rent for two weeks in advance of our moving in to the apartment we rented for our first year as full-time residents. The market was so competitive at the time (2009) that we had to agree to pay half a month’s rent in advance of the first of the month we moved in. If we weren’t willing to do that, the landlord had a line of folks behind us who were.

Armed with these fundamentals, you’re ready to go shopping…

As is every participant who joined us for last week’s Live And Invest In Europe event.

Bon voyage.

Kathleen Peddicord
Kathleen Peddicord
Founding Publisher, Overseas Opportunity Letter

Tags: 'rent'how to rent overseaslive overseasmove overseasrental contractsRenting overseas
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Kathleen Peddicord

Kathleen Peddicord

Kathleen Peddicord has reported on opportunities for Americans to live, retire, and do business overseas for 40 years. She has traveled to more than 75 countries, invested in real estate in 24, established businesses in 7, renovated and built properties in 6, and educated her children in 5.

Kathleen has moved children, staff, enterprises, household goods, and pets from the east coast of the United States to Waterford, Ireland, then to Paris, France, and finally to Panama City, Panama, where she has based her Live And Invest Overseas business. Peddicord and her husband, Lief Simon, now divide their time between Panama and Paris.

Peddicord was a partner with Agora Publishing’s International Living group for 23 years. She opened, staffed, and operated International Living publishing and real estate marketing offices in Waterford, Ireland; Panama City, Panama; Granada, Nicaragua; Roatan, Honduras; San Miguel de Allende, Mexico; Quito, Ecuador; and Paris, France. Peddicord launched Live And Invest Overseas group in 2008 and has built it into a successful multimillion-dollar business. Today, she shares her firsthand experience of expat life with more than 500,000 readers of her publications, including Overseas Opportunity Letter and Overseas Living Letter.

Kathleen has been featured often in The New York Times, MSNBC, AARP, CNN, Bloomberg, CNBC, and more and writes monthly about expat matters, international real estate, and offshore diversification for Forbes and U.S. News.

Kathleen has written several books including the memoirs “At Home In Ireland” and “At Home At Los Islotes” and her latest title “At Home Abroad,” all published by Lahardan Books. Her best-selling "How To Retire Overseas: Everything You Need To Know To Live Well (For Less) Abroad” was published by Penguin Random House in 2018 and her “Buying Real Estate Overseas For Cash Flow (And A Better Life)” was published by Wiley in August 2020.

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Top Countries

  • Spain
  • Portugal
  • Panama
  • Belize
  • Colombia
  • Cyprus
  • Mexico
  • France
  • Montenegro

Best For:

  • Health Care Abroad
  • Retirement Living
  • Cost Of Living
  • Investing in Real Estate
  • Establishing Residency
  • Gun Ownership
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BROWSE ALL COUNTRIES

Budgets

How Much Will It Cost
To Live Overseas?

Super Cheap

  • Chitré, Panama
  • Santa Marta, Colombia
  • Phuket, Thailand
  • Dumaguete, The Philippines

Cheap

  • Medellin, Colombia
  • Boquete, Panama
  • Kyrenia, Cyprus
  • Hua Hin, Thailand
  • The Algarve, Portugal

Affordable

  • Valencia, Spain
  • Cascais, Portugal
  • Las Terrenas, The DR
  • Pisa, Italy
  • La Rochelle, France
  • Mazatlán, Mexico

Luxury

  • Ambergris Caye, Belize
  • Kotor, Montenegro
  • The Panama City Beaches
  • Paris, France

Resources

Global Living

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