Finding a rental apartment in an unfamiliar city can be a bit of a minefield. Luckily there are several established online platforms that provide all the help you need.
(Photo: Ken Lund via Flickr / CC BY-SA 2.0)
Whether you need an apartment to stay for a month or two, or an even longer period, it’s always worth shopping around before making a booking. While many of the same rental properties are listed on several websites, each platform has its own policies and services that may or may not be suited to your specific needs. If you’re looking to rent an apartment and want to make sure you book through a reputable company, we’ve done some research and picked out 5 of the best online resources for finding the right rental home for you.
Blueground
Established almost a decade ago, Blueground are our number one choice for finding furnished apartment rentals in cities across the world for extended periods of a month or more. They provide professionally-managed, turnkey apartments with flexible leases to vetted guests, ensuring renters can hand over their money with maximum confidence and landlords can hand over their keys with peace of mind. A big advantage of booking through Blueground is that stays of more than a month often result in big cost savings, as the longer your stay the cheaper the rates tend to be. When we conducted searches for some major cities, we found hundreds of apartments routinely available, often located in the heart of the city as well as in its surrounding suburbs. The online booking process is simple too, and there’s also a 24-hour support service accessed via a dedicated guest app.
The Homelike
Set up in 2015 by two German entrepreneurs who were fed up of staying in hotels while working abroad, Homelike is particularly popular with business travellers seeking accommodation for a month or longer. The platform has an intuitive and easy-to-use interface with glossy photography of properties and amenities listed through simple graphic icons. Since its launch, the platform has come a long way and has a large number of apartments for rent in cities all over the globe. On our chosen dates, we found options to suit every budget and preference, from tiny studios in city centres through to family homes on the outskirts.
Housing Anywhere
Originally launched in 2009 to help students find shared accommodation, HousingAnywhere has since expanded its portfolio to cater for other demographics such as remote workers and families who find themselves between house moves and needing mid to long-term rentals. It has built a solid reputation over the years, with apartments offered in over 50 European cities. To book one, you’ll be asked to pay a month’s rent upfront, and once you’ve done so you’ll instantly be granted the opportunity to contact the landlord or letting agency directly to liaise or ask any questions ahead of your stay. When looking through available monthly rentals in various cities, we found a vast number on offer, including shared and private properties at a wide range of sizes and price points.
Roomster
Founded in 2003 and based in New York City, Roomster promises to make the experience of sharing a home easy and safe. Said to be the world’s largest online social network for roommates, it features an impressive 4 million active listings. The platform caters for people on a budget who are looking to save on living costs by sharing a flat with a roommate. It lets you hook up with others in the same situation and includes links to their social networks so you can vet them as reliably as possible – and vice versa. For a fee, Roomster even let you run a credit, employment, and criminal report on someone to verify their details. According to reports stats, the listings on Roomster are almost 50% below market value.
Airbnb
Still the best-known name on the short-term rentals market, our final recommendation is Airbnb. While some prefer to avoid staying in people’s private homes, nowadays the platform also has a huge number of properties that are used exclusively for short-lets, so you can avoid that feeling of being in someone’s personal space while they’re out of town. Airbnb has properties all over the globe, and it speaks volumes that the average guest rating is an impressive 4.7 out of 5 stars. The website is a delight to navigate too, with high-quality photography and an abundance of information on destinations and local neighbourhoods ranging from the practical to the inspiring.