Mahalo Chicos,

Ah, rental property. I believe I spoke sometime about this, but since I am once again in the market for rental property, I thought I’d talk about my trials with you.

Here is the site I often refer to the photos and descriptions in my honest opinion -but of course how else can say it- terrible! It is not tailored to the presentable more tailored to the just get the photo out there and see who bites appearance.

Anyways, I have noticed since 06 that the rental properties in Uruguay are shamefully over priced. More cheaply made apartment buildings are going up which to me means more people from other countries are coming. I have not seen any influx of Asian, South Asian, or Asian Pacific Islanders around. So far I am the only Asian Pacific Islander in Uruguay. I don’t mean that in exaggerated tones, honestly, this country is rather small and people know other people. Easily. Digressing here!

So, the suckey part of rental here the rental ’law’, you have to pay a deposit of one year’s rent to the owner or owner representative. Often times or actually it is so, the owner representative is your agent as well. So s/he recieves double commissions, which would clearly mean, s/he is not necessarily ’out to help you have the best deals’.

Recently, I’ve noticed that more and more agents speak English. It was not like that two years ago, actually it was rather weird. Picture someone that spoke little Spanish and two people that spoke no English, every time the English speaker would say something in Spanish, one of the two Spanish speakers would translate for the other than in turn translate in Spanish to the English speaker.

It’s funny. I’ve found that once an agent finds out your not a local they really jack up the asking price. Which is really unfair and annoying. 

Fortunately of the times when we’ve had to rent we only had two landlords and one agent -that speaks English-. One of the two landlords -to use my words losely- omitted certain important knowledge about the rental property and so did the agent to think about it which inturn translated to us to cut the rent short.

So to conclude this post, I’d say have someone you trust come along that speaks English and Spanish, always counter offer no matter what, don’t settle for anything less than what you want or else your stuck with it and may lose your deposit if you leave earlier than your contract, and once you see the place make sure you check how big the water heater is and how much water spurts out of the shower head and kitchen sink.

 Good luck.

www.odeliza.com