Looking for a cheap accommodation

They are hundreds of accommodation websites for Paris, millions of housing ads for students or professionals in Paris and it’s difficult to go over the flow of information especially if you are on a budget and looking for a cheap accommodation.

The price

The price you pay depends on the city in which you are willing to live. Here are some ranges of the rent price for some cities:

Paris : min 400€ in flat sharing, or 750€ individually.

Troyes : 378€ to 435€

Lyon : 407€ to 690€ 

Toulouse : 400€ to 650€

Nantes : 255€  to 600€

Metz : 200€ to 584€

Nancy : 200€ to 580€

You as a student can receive aid from CAF. If you have a studio in Paris, you can receive  206€ a month if you live alone and if you are in shared housing you can receive  €118 a month. But please note that this aid will change according to the city you live in.

At Feel Français, we can also help you with this complicated application and make it easier for you.

Be careful of scams

First thing if it’s too good to be true it’s usually a scam. Anything less than €450 per month sounds like cheap accommodation but is most likely to be a scam, so please watch out! You can try to get a stipend from governments like the CAF or get a job if you need money to cover a Paris rent.

50-something male looking for a 20-something female is never a good sign (it’s a colocation offer, not a lonely hearts ad!), stay internet savvy and don’t meet up with potential flatmates alone, always take a friend with you – likewise when viewing accommodation!

Check out how to avoid scams in this article.

Look around Paris

There is this mythology of living in Paris but now a lot of neighborhoods like Pantin, Bagnolet, and Vitry have access to Paris in 10 mn with the metro and give access to way better prices and cheap accommodation.

Now some recommendations for websites and student residences.

Websites

Erasmus : please only look at verified housing and be careful because there can be a lot of scams on this website. Great website for meeting up with potential colocataires and Erasmus students.

Appartager : Plenty of websites to find potential colocataires and a good way of meeting new people.

Studea Hauts de Seine A student residence from 534€.

Facebook Groups

You can join Plan Appart Paris;
There is also this group Plan coloc à Paris

There are also cheap family homestay solutions. Here are a few examples :

> Ensemble 2 generations

It’s an Intergenerational homestay where you live for free or by paying a small rent with an elderly. A very good option for cheap accommodation. They have 3 formulas:

Free housing + regular presence during evenings and night times (the only fee is a 390€ cotisation renewable each year.

Economic housing + mutual aid, you can share some special moments (theaters, reading, computer help …) and a regular presence + you pay participation to the monthly expenses of 100 euros + 390 euros cotisation, renewable each year.

Solidarity housing + passive watch. You ensure a passive watch and some spontaneous help in the heart of a benevolent cohabitation.
In Ile de France, you pay an occupancy allowance of 350 to 500 €; from 250 to 350 € for the province + 300 euros cotisation, renewable each year.

> Be my Nest 

Be My Nest is the site of the homestay accommodation!

Its mission: to help you find accommodation as you design it and offer you the moments you dreamed about : new city, new streets, new atmospheres, new smells, new friends, new house … With this objective, students are welcomed by French families, in a room for rent of very high quality, everywhere in Paris and in the suburbs.

Prices for a bedroom vary from 450€ outside of Paris to about 1000€ for the most expensive ones in Paris.

> Homemerci

The goal of Homerci? To recreate the link between generations, to make young and old participate in the future of society.

“We connect a senior still active or retired – or a family that has a free room, with a student – apprentice – trainee – young graduate/worker, French or international who seeks housing. The student pays a decent rent whose price varies according to the criteria of the room and is still lower than the market price.”

Prices: 59 € for meeting with Homerci, research work of a family or senior host + % deducted according to the monthly rent and the duration of accommodation.

> Room4TalkA

A website that offers flatshares for cheap accommodation: “Room4Talk gives students the opportunity to use the experience of flat-sharing to exchange with foreign students, to practice a foreign language and dramatically improve the quality of their speech.”

You enter the language you want to practice and the city and you will discover all the flat-sharing opportunities available.

Prices are cheaper when you share the cost! Count between 500€ and 800€, but be careful and try to avoid scams.

> La Carte des Colocs

The site is completely free, it offers to find his roommate directly through a map where are located all the ads. Consulting the ads (which are all verified) and contacting your future roommates will always be free and unlimited. Tools like Google Maps and StreetView are used to help you search as efficiently and quickly as possible.

Prices start at 350€.

You can also try reaching out to your country peers in France like Americans in Paris etc, they have sometimes great tips to share.

Finally, you can find many affordable accommodation offers on our Feel Français platform, don’t hesitate to check it out!

The cheapest rate that we have seen so far in a student residence is at Ecla for a room with 6 to 8 persons. Around 440€/month

Good luck with your search!

Discover a testimony from one of our students:

“Yes, finding an apartment was not easy at all and I will share all three experiences I have encountered the past year. I was not in Paris yet when I found my first apartment. It took me a few months to find one. I struggled at the start because most owners required a visit. I found my apartment on appartager.com. It is the perfect website if you are looking for a housemate or roommate.

However, there are downsides to appartager.com. I noticed there are quite a handful of con artists so students have to be careful. Most of the owners only accept payment by cash. Some require a deposit before visiting. I was almost conned. I came across a really beautiful 32m2 apartment up for rent for 450€. It was located in the 10th, a prime area. For that price in that area? I found it too good to be true.

I contacted the owner

She was extremely nice and told me to make advance payment for 2 months of rent. It was weird for her to request that since I have not visited the apartment yet. She seemed to trust me 100%. I will not go into details but the events that followed after that convinced me she was a con artist and I decided not to proceed with payment. 

I managed to find an apartment on the 20th for 500€ per month. My owner was an Algerian woman. Exchanging messages was hard because there was a language barrier and I depended on google translate most of the time. She seemed legitimate and was very kind to me. I trusted her words. There were 4 rooms in the apartment and 3 were occupied. She told me she would wait upon my arrival and save the room for me. 

I arrived in Paris and got into the apartment

That’s when I realized she was staying in the living room with her 16-year-old daughter. That was definitely something she missed out on telling me about since the start. It seemed a little dishonest from then onwards. I tried to overlook it because at least I had a room to myself. I talked to my housemates about it and they told me they felt the same and were not too happy about it which is why they only come back at night to sleep.

She has government aid as she is a single mother so she is technically not supposed to rent out her apartment and claim rent from anyone that’s why she only accepts payment by cash and I could not apply for CAF. I did not feel comfortable staying there and wanted to leave but thinking about the whole process of finding a new apartment did not intrigue me at all so I stayed on. However, I only stayed there for 2 months before I got kicked out.

I got kicked out

Yes, I got kicked out for something she gave me permission to do, which was inviting friends over to my room. One of those days she told me I had to leave and gave me 2 weeks to look for another apartment. That was obviously impossible to achieve at that time and by then I had already started classes so I was under a lot of stress. My friend took me in while I was looking for a new place. She stayed at a residence called Nexity, next to Rosa Parks RER Station. I stayed with her for 3 weeks and felt like I was invading her personal space as she stayed in a 21m2 studio, 1 bedroom. It was not a student residence as I saw tourists, families, and old people staying there. I would say the majority were students though.

There were studios available in Nexity but the rent was way over my budget! 21m2 were the biggest rooms available. Most were 19m2 and rent starts from 817€ per month. To me, it was very expensive but at that point, I was desperate and tired of being completely out of luck so I decided to settle with the 19m2 studio. I stayed there for 8 months during which I did not have many complications there I just felt like they overcharge everything.

I was free

In fact, I was free to do anything I want as long as it does not include damaging the furniture. I decided to move out because I did not like the neighborhood and I just felt like Nexity overcharges everything.  The only reason why I stayed there was out of desperation and it was walking distance to school. It was convenient. On the day I moved out, a staff came in to check how clean my room was but she charged me with a cleaning fee. I moved out on the 29th of June this year and I am still waiting for my deposit back after deducting cleaning fees and I have yet to know the amount. 

Currently, I am in Malaysia for the summer break and my boyfriend and I decided to stay together and share rent. We are still in search of a way bigger apartment around the 3rd and 10th arrondissement where it feels more like Paris. We are searching on the websites pap.fr and leboncoin. My boyfriend has made 2 visits so far and another next week. Yes, I am aware agencies like Paris stay, book a flat, and Paris attitude offer great apartments/studios but charge crazy fees on top of it so most of my friends and I usually search on pap.fr and leboncoin. 

I hope sharing my experience will help shed light on what foreign students like us face when we search for accommodation, and hopefully, this will help you in your planning of operations. “

If you want to discover more tips on how to avoid scams, you can read this article.

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