Written by Raghuraman
05 Dec 2014
Sooner or later you will hear that finding a room in Stockholm is a nightmare and everyone struggles with it. Finding a room before coming to Sweden is more challenging. Anyway, I’m here to help! I have been looking for housing the last month or so and have just found one.
The best way to find housing in Stockholm is through your network of friends. Swedes generally have strong close knit communities and tapping into these communities is pretty much the holy grail for finding anything including housing. A friend of a friend is going to have a room he or she can share with you. But this one is going to be difficult to do from outside Sweden.
Another great way to do it is by using Blocket. You might have heard of this and its basically Sweden’s Ebay. Sweden has a huge potential in second hand trading and some second hand things are just hilariously cheap cuz of no demand. One way is to reply to hundreds of ads posted by people renting out houses. But this one is tedious and often you get just one reply / ten mails you send. The trick is to post an ad that you are looking for housing or a room. This way you are in the drivers seat and people who ‘like’ you will send you mails and SMS saying they have a place to rent. So here is a short guide to make the most out of posting ads on Blocket! 😀
Step 1.
Get a nice looking picture of yourself. Try a get a half decent photographer friend to take a picture of you in which you dont look like a total party animal. Thats more or less what people are looking for.. someone who wont destroy their apartment!
Step 2.
Get someone who knows Swedish well to write the description for you. Need not be too fancy but do not use to google translate. I repeat DO NOT use google translate. You can even say (in the ad) that your Swedish isnt great and that you want further correspondence in English. It feels more natural and trustable when written in Swedish. Google translate is too broken and sounds a bit creepy unfortunately.
Step 3.
Well, to post an ad on Blocket, you need a Swedish bank account to make the payment. So you would have to contact a future classmate or professor or someone you know to make the payment. Its not a big amount so it shouldn’t be a problem.
Step 4.
You will start receiving phone calls and mails soon. So make a nice excel sheet and track the replies you’ve been getting. Do not pay before you have signed the contract, there are many people out there to cheat international students so be careful. But you should be able to find nice place soon 🙂
But its never too early to start looking for housing and dont have too many restrictions while choosing the house. Be a little flexible and you will find a great place!
