It’s coming.
Another cita and another bureaucratic maze to navigate. But this time? I’ve sort of done it to myself.
For months, Will and I have been discussing a move from our quiet, residential Valencian neighborhood to the busier, livelier city center. While we like this area of the city, it’s lacking some specific things we want: restaurants, a bit more English community, and even more walkability.
The list could continue. This neighborhood served us well for settling in, acclimating ourselves to the city, and providing plenty of opportunities to practice our bumbling Spanish. And the views from this apartment? Killer.
Honestly, I was terrified of trying to find a new place because it’s an understatement of the year to say the Valencia real estate market is tight—especially for rentals. And we have a dog, which makes things even more difficult.
So I put it off. “We’ll just stay here for a while longer,” I said. “We know our landlord. We know the area. We have Leo. It’s going to be too hard to look for something else.”
In March, the property manager who manages our rental reached out and wanted to know if we’d be extending our lease beyond September. Now we had to make a decision.
“What’s the latest we can let you know?” I asked.
“Mid-May would be good just so that we have time to market the property.”
With a hard deadline, it was time to figure this out. And I resisted. I was comfortable. In stasis. But as Will and I began to explore what our options might be via Idealista, leaving our current apartment began to look less and less like an impossibility.
Our first Valencia apartment, the one we're currently leaving, was relatively easy to square away. Through Valencia Facebook groups, I heard about Stepping Stone, a rental agency specializing in mid-term rentals and associated with Valencia Property. I did a little digging and quickly decided they could help. Will and I browsed the listings, landed on this place, and contacted the agency. Within a few days, we had a signed lease and a soft place to land once we made our way to Valencia.
This time around, we were looking for a long-term lease—not short- or mid-term, which is an entirely different game. The reality of the Valencia rental market is this: If you’re looking at properties listed for €1,600 or less, competition is fierce. You’re competing mostly with Spanish people earning Spanish salaries. This means they likely have work contracts, meaning the landlords can take out insurance on these tenants to protect themselves from nonpayment of rent. As a foreigner without a Spanish work contract, this immediately puts you at a disadvantage.
So how do you overcome your obvious disadvantages to win the apartment?
If you’re fortunate enough to have the ability to go above €1,600 in rent, start there. In our case, we needed at least three bedrooms and two bathrooms, which meant most apartments were going to be above that range anyway. Now add in the need for air conditioning, an elevator, and pet-friendly, and the list gets short fast.
One option to give yourself an advantage over other foreigners competing for the same apartments is to sign up for Finaer. Finaer guarantees your monthly income and acts as a guarantor for the landlord, much like the insurance landlords can take out on tenants who have Spanish work contracts. Both owners and tenants can purchase this insurance, and while we didn’t end up using it, our agent indicated it could be a big plus in our favor if it came to that.
You can shop for apartments on your own. In fact, many, many people do and are successful. How? Sign up for an account on Idealista, where nearly all properties are listed, create a profile complete with income and family members, and start sending messages. The caveat? Using a U.S.-based phone number or sending messages in English instead of Spanish may not receive a response. And even if you are sending messages in Spanish with a Spanish phone number, you still may not receive a response.
Listing agents and landlords are bombarded with messages about their properties, especially in a hot market like Valencia’s, so you can imagine how difficult it is to respond to every single one. To work our way around this and hopefully gain more insights into how this market works, Will and I chose to hire an agent, once again through Valencia Property. It isn’t free, and while I balked at the cost at first, what we were paying for was knowledge, strategy, and relationships—not to mention her fluent Spanish.
This is where I began to realize that moving was not going to be an inexpensive venture, and it dawned on me why Spanish people don’t tend to move around a lot.
During our first conversation, our agent said, “If you find something you like, you’re going to want to act quickly. Rentals don’t stay on the market long, and if you wait too long, it’ll be gone.”
The search began with that nugget in mind. Will and I collaborated with our agent via WhatsApp and an Idealista list, working quickly to cull the listings we weren’t interested in. Then our agent set up showings, which she attended with us, helping us get answers to our questions, translating, and explaining rental terms for each apartment.
At each showing, we toured the apartment, with the listing agent pointing out neighborhood features, amenities of the building and apartment, and explaining availability timeframes. Some apartments had great features (a laundry room! a kitchen island!) but didn’t have the neighborhood vibe we were looking for. Some had a great location but were far too small. Some checked every box but required more euros than we were willing to shell out every month.
You get the idea.
Apartment shopping was a balance between affordability, size, and neighborhood. You can have affordable, spacious, or well-located but rarely all three.
In the end, the apartment we chose was in Ruzafa, a vibrant city-center neighborhood with an international flavor we really like. While not the size we were dreaming of, it's slightly larger than our current place and is within walking distance of so many restaurants and activities. Instead of a 20-minute metro ride to get anywhere, we’ll be able to walk to almost everything we want to do. And what we can’t walk to, we can take a bus, metro, or tram.
Our new landlord required a three-month deposit instead of two months to account for Leo, and our old landlord is letting us out of our lease without 60 days’ notice. Instead, he’s asked us to pay for half a month of rent even though we’re moving sooner, which we think is very fair. He’s been an amazing landlord, and we are truly sorry to leave him.
If you don’t have a Spanish work contract, prepare to present a flurry of paperwork, mostly to prove your financial standing. We showed bank statements for the past three months from two U.S. banks we use in addition to proof of our monthly passive income. Finaer might have prevented that, but it was also yet another fee we’d need to pay, and our agent advised against it unless totally necessary. That turned out to be sage advice.
One other thing to keep in mind: To land an apartment in Valencia, you will very likely end up paying an additional fee to the agency listing the apartment. It’s often coined an “administrative fee” or something else, and while this is technically illegal in Spain since a 2023 law was passed, the reality is not paying it means you’ll likely lose the rental. You can attempt to get the fee back once you’ve secured the rental, but honestly? Good luck.
This process was a beast, but having someone with our interests in mind made a big difference. Our agent is still answering our questions as we prep for the move and helping us navigate the rest of this process. Once moved, we’ll still have to deal with registering on the padrón, changing the addresses on our TIEs, setting up WiFi, and all the other admin tasks that come with moving—only we now have to figure it out in Spanish.
Right now, I'm sitting in my current apartment surrounded by totes, boxes, Christmas decor, bubble wrap, and a blanket of anxiety. In the end? Definitely worth it.
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Congrats! My family is in the middle of a very similar search and it looks like we found one not far from where you guys landed (we'll be in Pla del Remei). We're also bringing a dog and I'm curious about what that experience is like in the city center -- perhaps a topic for a future article. :) Good luck on the move.
Congratulation, Jen!! This was a super interesting and informative article, thank you for sharing your experience! I think your move to Rusafa will be a game changer. I stayed there during my reccy trip and it was my favourite part of my trip. Rusafa has such a vibe. When my brother and sister-in-law came to visit while I was there, we went out exclusively in Rusafa and had an absolute blast!